


The End Of Us

by daughterofthesky



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Beaches, Broken Promises, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Feelings, Feelings Realization, First Love, Flashbacks, Friendship, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Innocence, Late Night Conversations, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Trust, M/M, Moving On, Old Friends, Past, Plans For The Future, Promises, Slow Burn, Small Towns, Summer, Teen Angst, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2019-12-26 11:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18281984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofthesky/pseuds/daughterofthesky
Summary: Friendships are forever… until they’re not.Thirteen-year-old Jisung loves two things: cheesecake and spending his summer holidays with his three best friends in the whole world in a small, coastal town in the south of the country. Every year they reunite and have the best time of their lives. But seventeen-year-old Jisung knows better: after the summer of 2014 things won’t be the same. Young adult Jisung doesn’t want to go back after what happenedthatsummer. He doesn’t want to relive what drifted them away.This is a story of self-discovery, of growing up and falling apart. A story of four best friends and love and feelings and problems and confrontations. And summer, always summer. And, of course, the end of a friendship.It is centered on a teenage, seemingly perfect group of friends, who spend every summer gathered on a small town. However, not every summer is the same—when something happens during the summer of 2014, the four of them split and their friendship ends abruptly. Five years later, just before heading for college, Jisung is forced to meet with them again and, hopefully, make amends with the past that haunts him.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey inspired by “we were liars”, “stand by me” and “a separate peace”. it was an original idea based on personal experience, but i changed it a bit so that it could fit stray kids. i've had this idea and these feelings inside for so long and now i'm finally letting go. it deeply touches my heart because its root comes from my own experience and it just hits home in a way; i hope it doesn't suck. i've been working on it for months, since last year, and i hope it was worth it.  
> i wanna thank everyone in advance for giving it a chance, even if you just clicked on it and read what it was about, thank you. i can't promise it will be good, but i can promise you i did my best.  
> i don't really know how many chapters it will have, 12 is just an approximation. i will finish this au, and i can promise you i won't abandon it, so you can count on that. i will tell the story from beginning to end, even if i'm not the most consistent updater.  
> i'm gonna say this now, so that you're not disappointed later on: it is kinda predictable. i'm not looking for unpredictable, i'm just looking to tell the story of these four friends, and how it came to an end. i'm sorry if it ends up disappointing you, but you've been warned.  
> the names of the families/parents/grandparents and the name of the places, such as town and the colleges are fictional. i made them up and therefore don't exist. if they do, it's purely coincidental.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just a prologue. it's like an introduction.

**_Friendships are forever… until they’re not._ **

 

_ Five years ago, I promised myself I wouldn’t come back. I promised myself I wouldn’t turn back either. I wouldn’t see that house again and I wouldn’t have to spend any more summers there like I used to: I was saying goodbye to a part of me. A lifestyle. I can’t deny that I wasn’t afraid of letting go. Five years ago, I was on the edge of falling, on the line between being sane and spiraling down a black hole. I was lost. I was confused and I wanted it all to stop. I wanted them far away from me. Still, now I’m coming back. _

_ Five years ago, I promised I wouldn’t see any of them again. I was so convinced I wouldn’t. I had forced myself to grow into the idea of moving on and leaving them behind like they did with me. It was such a perfectly crafted plan. A plan so flawless yet so hard to carry out. I wouldn’t speak of them or even think of those three people that had meant a whole childhood to me. My closest friends. Five years ago we were done, our history was made and forgotten. I still did come back to them. _

_ Five years ago we went our separate ways. We went on living and erasing the past we had forged together with friendship and love and childhood and adventures and fantasies. And innocence. Our forever friendship came crumbling down with a fight that symbolized the decay of our own selves, the end of it all. It had vanished into the air. But it was only the start in a way; it was the beginning of the inevitable — growing up. Our time had come to drift apart, like people always do. Like we did, like we had to. It was our destiny to meet each other and forget each other, it had been predetermined. But it is also destiny that we meet again. _

_ Five years ago I forgot there was a time I had friends. That there was a time I used to be happy, and not stressed and troubled with grades and trying to get into universities and succeeding at life. I remember that I was once a kid, with high hopes for the future and three other pair of hands to catch me if I fell. Eventually, I did fall, and neither of them were there for me. Those hands that had used to build sandcastles with me and play with blocks and pat my back when I was feeling down were gone. I had moved on and so had they. And no one was there for each other, no one expected that anyways. _

_ I had forgotten that I used to be happy. I used to have it all. I had people who cared about me, and people I cared deeply about. How was I able to lose it all? _

_ Five years ago we fought and we walked away from the house and the beach and the bubble and our friendship. And our shared childhood. I could make it on my own. My future would still be bright without them, I was sure. I didn’t need them. They didn’t need me either. We made that pretty clear the last time we saw each other. _

_ We all broke a promise that day. I broke a promise I, myself, had made a lifetime ago. Today, I’m breaking another; the promise of never seeing them again. I don’t know if I’m glad or disappointed, or a mix of both. My heart sure does feel lighter, and I get this feeling inside of finally coming home after being gone for so long. I missed my home, who knew I could get homesick for a home that isn’t mine anymore? I get this tingling sensation at the tip of my fingers, like I’m about to touch something I’ve been reaching out for this whole time. But what exactly am I reaching out to? _

_ I get excited, just like I used to when I was younger. I remember that I longed for it to be summer, so I’d see them again. There was nothing else I would look forward to than being with my best friends for three whole months. I didn’t really understand the world back then like I do now. _

_ Five years ago it was the end of our story. And that, altogether, was the end of us. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise, it gets better.


	2. Nobody's Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Nobody's Home" by One Ok Rock](https://open.spotify.com/track/62gG3mbRs0CWOkvf7Hk4O9?si=532nIcRXR_q80Ey4jc6FYw)  
> I've betrayed you so many times  
> I just say from my heart that I'm sorry  
> At last, I realize  
> Nobody's home  
> That day, I threw everything away and ran  
> If I remember correctly  
> You gave my back the push it needed  
> Did you realize when we broke apart  
> I didn't know what to do and still regretted it?  
> Nobody's home  
> Even if I were to collapse into nothing  
> What I can’t see before my eyes  
> Is tied with our will to live  
> Nobody's home  
> Because I honestly bombarded you with trouble  
> Someday for sure I’ll get better, definitely  
> I'll show you the scenery I want you to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is also just an introduction to the setting and the characters  
> tw at the end of ch !!

_It ended the way it started: messy and needy and unfathomably. It was long like a heavy rainstorm, but fast like lightning. It was a hurricane; a nightmare I saw coming but did nothing to stop. How could’ve I? I know I was the only one trying, the only one doing something to prevent us from sinking and rotting at the bottom of the ocean. We sank anyways. I guess I didn’t try as hard as I thought I did._

_If you would’ve told me that I’d be seeing them again five years later, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would’ve laughed at your face and jeered at how delusional you sounded. I would’ve called you a liar, a betrayer. I would’ve turned my back on you and walk away, just like I did with them. I would’ve said that I didn’t need you and I would be clearly lying, but hiding it flawlessly._

_If I may be honest, I don’t regret it. I mean, I do have regrets of course, the outcome wasn’t precisely nice, but there is nothing I could’ve done to prevent it. Just like you can’t prevent a storm._

_I was pissed at myself. How could I not be? I was mad at how things had turned out, I was furious at how I acted, as how I let it all crumble down in front of my eyes. And I couldn’t do anything. I watched it all burn down and turn into ashes and debris and fade away. That’s what I knew how to do best: watch everything I love break away and leave me. It all ran out of my reach, out of hand. I always lose, it’s in my nature: they all leave me in the end._

 

❦

The car ride is pleasant, just like the calm before the storm. It’s quiet and peaceful and soothing, windows down, and it allows me to forget why I’m there in the first place. _I don’t want to be there._ I watch the ocean, getting lost in the rhythmic percussion of the waves crashing onto the sand. I missed that sound. I missed the smell in the air. My hair tousles into a mane and I close my eyes momentarily, just taking it all in. _I used to love summer._ My eyes are steady to the horizon now, face aglow with the very first rays of the sunlight that welcomes a new day. Mom’s lips bear the resemblance of a smile, although subtle, just enough to show that she’s enjoying her thoughts, whatever they may be. Though I know what she thinks.

My voice tumbles out softly, “I’m doing this _just_ because you want me to.” Maybe there’s a tad of venom in those words. I don’t want to hurt her, just hint that perhaps I don’t want to go there — because I honestly don’t. I would much rather be buried alive or go visit distant relatives I haven’t seen since forever and that probably don’t know my name. Either way, Mom is nonchalant. I’m starting to think she enjoys my suffering. “No other reason at all.”

“You’ll thank me later,” she gracefully replies, eyes unwavering from the road. A few more hours and we’ll reach our destination by midday. It’s gonna be torturous.

“I can’t believe that you’re making me go back there after everything that happened.” Mother is so naive. People don’t change. I surely haven’t changed since then. “You’re not even coming with me,” I complain but she won’t listen. She never does.

“I’m not ready to face them yet,” she says, taking a hand from the steering wheel and caressing my hair gently. I turn to face her as she runs a hand through my hair, landing it on my cheek, cupping it softly. “I don’t want to show up without him.” She wouldn’t be strong enough.

“Mom, we—” _we’ve talked about this a hundred times. They’re your childhood friends, you’ve known them all your life_. I’ve known them all my life, ever since I can remember they’ve been there, every single summer, one after the other. But it has nothing to do with that; she doesn’t want their pity, their condolences, _not from them. Never from them._ In a way, I completely understand her. I just wish it wasn’t this way, I wish she wouldn’t have to suffer on her own.

“It’ll do you good,” she says, cutting me off the way she always does when a sensitive topic meets the conversation. She’s a very fragile person, like glass: she could break in any minute. I must protect that glass before it shatters and there’s no turning back. “It’s your last summer before you leave for college.” _Before you leave this all behind._ “Besides, these past few months you’ve been so stressed with college applications and essays and reports that you need a time off. You have been accepted already.”

Sejong University. The college of my dreams. Countless of nights I lay in bed just dreaming of attending such prestigious place, and never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed that I’d actually get in. My hard work finally paid off, and I know thirteen-year-old me is proud of me, of how far I’ve come. I didn’t want to let Mom and Father down, not after everything they did for me. And now that Father’s gone, it just feels like a duty, like a responsibility.

“Yeah, but a hundred thousand miles from here,” I mouth, so that she won’t listen. I don’t want to crush her. “I don’t know if I’m gonna go. I told you, I don’t want to leave you alone now that Father’s gone and Doyoung is still away.”

Her tone shrills. The glass shudders. “Your brother left for college and so will you and I’ll be fine. I’m not alone,” she defends herself. “I have my friends and my job and I’m perfectly okay.” She scoffs a forced laugh. I’m not convinced at all, but I won’t argue.

I know it’s just better to drop the topic, so I do.

A few minutes go by in silence before she says something again, this time the smile that wasn’t there before widens. “I remember when it used to be the four of us,” she reminisces, like some distant memory when in fact, she’s talking about something that happened merely eight years ago. _A lifetime ago._ Back then I was another me. “Your father would drive, and I would choose the music and both Doyoung and you would complain but nevertheless sing along with me,” she pauses, a faint tear forming on the corner of her eye. She releases a shaky, heavy breath, “I loved that. I loved that so much.”

“I know, Mom.” _I miss it too._

She clears her throat. “Now Doyoung’s in college and your father’s gone and you’re going to leave for college as well and nothing makes me prouder than seeing you boys grow up and leave the nest.”

I nod, silent. The word _grow up_ lingers in my mind for the rest of the ride until I eventually fall asleep.

 

❦

 

We always spent the summers near the coast. Hallim is a small town located in the south of the country, where our parents grew up. Full of elderly people now, so it’s pretty quiet and calm, like any other town by the shore. It doesn’t appear on maps. It is beachy and colorful and private, there the sky and the water seem to fuse into one. A community of people where everyone knows each other, and they don’t face any big crimes. It's decent and silent, almost secretive. It’s a bubble in its own special and characteristic way, and it is a place to establish friendships like nowhere else, friendships that will last a lifetime.

It was a tiny coastal town on the edge of South Korea, excluded from the rest of the country. It feels like a grain of sand compared to the rest of the world. It was a hideout for us, to distance ourselves from the troubles and the expectations and the disappointments and restrictions and responsibilities: a world where we could be precisely ourselves without the need to prove who we were to anyone, where the world screamed at us to be only who we were inside. Nothing more, nothing less. There, we didn’t need to act like grown-ups — we were kids and we were having fun. And we were enjoying summer and the company of best friends. There was nothing more blissful than waking up and rushing to the beach and surf the waves and enjoy a low-budget picnic with your closest companions right there, in the most beautiful place on Earth. There was nothing like watching the sunset fall over the sea at the horizon and thinking that, just once, you wanted the world to stop and freeze the image.

Coming back would be a relief, but it's really not. I'll have to face them again and I know I'm not ready. I can’t rekindle a broken and damaged friendship. It won't be only awkward but strange. We're not who we used to be, and I fear that they changed. I fear that I've changed, that I've become someone they don't recognize. Someone who isn't their friend, and I know I’m not who I used to be but I’m not exactly sure that’s a good thing.

Still, I would lie if I said that after these five years, I hadn’t missed it at all.

 

❦

“Jisung, we’re almost there.”

When I open my eyes it’s like I’m being transported in time: I feel like I’m back to that summer, five years ago. _Nothing’s changed, nothing at all._ It’s actually scary how surreal this feels, like I’m dreaming and not really there, in flesh and blood. _I don’t want to be there._ I feel like I’m thirteen again and the excitement of seeing them once more rises within me, and I know that I can’t help feeling like I want this. I _want_ to see them. Maybe I’ve been longing for this ever since we drifted apart. But I don’t: I wouldn’t want to go through what we went through five years ago. Not again. It’d be a nightmare I wouldn’t know how to wake up from. I’m sure I will want to get out of there in less than five hours.

We arrive at the center of Hallim. I recognize the cinema we went to watch our first horror film, the park with the big, tall, silver statue of a man I never cared to learn the name of, the cheap and lousy supermarket where we used to buy our slushies and snacks before heading to the beach. That’s something that I love so much, how close everything is, how caged and protected it makes me feel. But it all remained intact. It feels like a movie set. Everything just seems to be at hand. Soon, we’ll reach the house, that is a ten-minute walk to the center and three blocks from the beach.

As soon as I make out the view of the abandoned hotel lying on the corner of the street, I know I’ll be arriving soon.

The house. That spacious big old beach house with a wooden porch and two gardens that lies at the end of the unpaved street. That house, the place our parents grew up in, the place they formed their friendship, like ours. History repeated itself with us. But we weren’t as loyal to it. The place where it all started and, coincidentally, the place where it all ended.

Something within me hopes that nothing has changed in the past few years. I’ve never been fond of change. I still hope to arrive to an overwhelmed ‘grandma’, three pair of people who were like parents to me, and my _ex_ best friends. I wish I could say that I don’t know what happened between the four of us, but I know it too well to even lie. I wish I could ease my mind and shut my eyes and disappear. Fly away like a cloud and never come down. _I’m not ready to face them yet_ , I don’t know how. I can’t say I haven’t mentally prepared myself for this day, but I have. I guess I’m a coward after all.

Mom parks outside the garage and faces me. “Jisung, listen to me. This will do you good,” she nods, assuring me with a faint smile. “It’s for your own good. Plus, I know you missed this place.” I do, I did miss this place. I just didn’t miss _them_.

“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I say, and she pecks my cheek. I get out of the car and take out my suitcase, the sun instantly blinding me, the heat wave finally reaching my body. My skin feels like it’s scorching and I’m positive that I didn’t think my outfit through enough: I want to rip my jeans off. Sweat trickles down my forehead and I don’t turn around to see her drive away before I go up the porch stairs and knock softly on the door, feeling like a little kid again.

 

❦

The house, owned by Miyoung Hwang, was the host of a total of four families every summer. The house that had seen the growth of a family, the leaving of the nest and the arrival of new families. The house where Hyunjin’s father grew up in, the house where our fathers used to play in and throw slumber parties. A big part of my Father’s life was spent in that house, as well as mine. He always used to say it was his home, not a second home, but where his heart truly belonged. Or where his heart never left.

Miyoung was always kind enough to let us stay for the summer. It was a tradition and a reunion of, in my Father’s case, old friends. In my case, it meant seeing my three best friends for three whole months every year.

 

The Hwangs. Highly respected and insanely rich. Practical and pristine and perfect. Sophisticated and posh and high society. Mr. Hwang, the embodiment of hard work and a simple life. Athletic, tall and handsome. Faithful husband and loving father. Mrs. Hwang, as innocent as a rose, a social butterfly with her expensive dinners and surgical smile. And then their only son, Hwang Hyunjin. One of my closest childhood friends. Caring and sweet. Thoughtful and impulsive and hilarious. Innocent like his mother, athletic like his father. The golden child. Troublemaker and daredevil but a pure heart, always good intentions. A family based on social acceptance and money inherited by Hyunjin’s late grandparent and Miyoung’s husband. We never knew the reason for his fortune but back then, we we sure that we wouldn’t understand. We didn’t care. Hyunjin is the respective heir to the house, after his father.

The Kims. Simplistic and idealistic and eccentric. Nihilistic and nonreligious. Mr. Kim, a middling-successful history teacher. Mrs. Kim, an artist, selling her paintings to galleries and for the purpose of home decor. Moneywise, they are far from the Hwangs, far from the fortune. They have struggled all their life and are finally reaching success. Seungmin, intelligent and strategic. Skeptical and quiet. Uptight and rigid and insensitive but understanding. The smartest one of us. But also troubled. Too much weight of the family on his shoulders. Back then, even before he turned into a teenager, he could feel the responsibility and expectations rising up. The stress and pressure came later on, of course. Together with the end.

The Lees. A numerous family; two parents, four kids - two of them twins. Countless of pets, including a dog, a cat and a lizard. Happy and enthusiastic and loud. Bubbly and energetic and cheerful. Charity donors with loving and gentle hearts. A group of sensitive people. Always helping people in need, always looking after one another. Eager to brighten anyone’s day with a genuine smile. It’s admirable really, how much selflessness and generosity they have taught their kids. I wish my Father had done the same with me. The twins: Chaewon and Felix. The oldest siblings. Born rivals but nevertheless caring with each other. Protective and impulsive and fearless. Fragile but tough. Felix always saw Chaewon as the kindest soul on Earth. It’s funny because I always used to think he was kinder.

And finally, us. The Hans. A family of four. We have more than we need but we aren’t as close to wealth as the Hwangs, none of us are. Father, a multi premiered, high status doctor. Looked up by everyone, including their sons Doyoung and Jisung. Stoic and strict and exhausted; work drained him. Unreachable in numerous ways. He would always find time to teach us valuable lessons about work life. Mom, the absolute opposite of her husband. Nurturing and soft. An angel that bestowed happiness on our family. Until Father’s untimely passing. Doyoung, smart and funny. A jock with good grades, scholarships and white smiles. Bright future. His younger brother, Han Jisung, introverted and lonely. An absolute no one without his childhood friends. A young adult lost in a world of words that he can't spit out. Troubled by a past that haunts him.

 

The house is big enough to host at least 3 more families. It has plenty of rooms and space, but it’s quite ancient as well; walls covered with priceless paintings, a lot of old bookshelves standing in every room, old vases and rugs, chandeliers hanging here and there and window-covered curtains. It has two gardens, one behind it and one next to the house. We used to call the big garden - the one beside the house - the second garden, as it used to have a football net and the orchard and the gazebo and the seesaws and the swings.

 

I have so many fond memories that bring me back to a part of myself I've been shutting for the longest time. It hurts to open up, but it heals.

 

I can see it all as it used to be, from memory. I have dreamed about the house a couple of times. But things have inevitably changed, and so have we.

 

Time changes people. It definitely has changed us.

 

Though sometimes, I really wish it wouldn't have. Sometimes I wish it would all have remained the same.

 

Why?

 

I still don't know.

 

❦

I feel like I’ve come back from war. These past years have been nothing but ticking bombs and grenades and mines and gunfire and war. Confusion and disappointment and hope and loss. That I've been stuck fighting for something, someone. That I've done everything to get back to this moment, this house, these memories.

Miyoung hugs me like I’m her own son, grandson, and that I've come back from war, tears pooling in her eyes, short shaky breaths and trembling hands; she blesses, hugging me like I've been gone for an eternity. Like I've finally just come home and back into her arms. I missed her warmth, her touch.

She smiles, welcoming me inside with the widest smile. I know she is glad to have me home. I’ve noticed that she missed me too much and I want to apologize for being gone for so long but I don’t. I just smile back foolishly.

It isn't until I step inside that I realize the house has shrunken. Or maybe I got bigger, taller somehow. The house grew up with us. It's exactly like I remember it. But smaller, now that I'm not a thirteen year old prepubescent boy but a man of eighteen, ready to head for college. Nevertheless, it is still covered in antiques, walls covered with old family photos and the floral pattern on the wall is still as uglier as ever, but I missed it. I remember every inch of this house; the bricks, the blue door - even though it’s worn out now I can still remember its vividity and strength. Everything in this house is original and eccentric, pretty much like its owner. The floral prints on the couch are bold and the furniture is sparse and simple and somewhat vintage. Though it could use improvements, I wouldn’t want to change a thing. The familiar smell of cinnamon floats around the kitchen and I feel like I’m finally safe. That the war is truly over. The truth is, it hasn’t even started yet.

It is then that I realize Seungmin is sitting all by himself by the kitchen table. He looks spiffy with his round glasses and his white ironed shirt and combed brown hair swept to the sides. He looks awfully shy too, like he's meeting me for the first time and he's trying to make a good impression. He has grown a few more inches and is now taller than me; the _perks_ of adolescence.

“Hello Seungmin,” I greet him. That word tastes funny in my mouth.

His eyes fall in mine. A shy smile makes way on his face but fades as soon as it appears, as if afraid to show pleasance. “Hi.” He bows back politely.

 _So_ formal. So different.

I sit down in front of him. “How have you been?” I ask casually. Deep down inside I’m praying we won’t have an awkward conversation or awkward silences. It feels like I’m meeting a stranger. Like I haven’t known him my whole life up to thirteen, that I haven’t seen him go through puberty and changes. He’s a new canvas I have still to explore; I need to get to know him again, from scratch.

He smiles once again, but only briefly. “Good, thank you.”

“He is going to be a successful lawyer soon,” Miyoung says by the counter, focused on cooking lunch. Her tteokbokki already smells delicious.

“A lawyer?”

“It's what people expect from me,” he says, voice losing its volume. Is he ashamed of it? Is he justifying himself to me? That hasn’t changed I see.

So different from the prepubescent boy he was five years ago. Very much distant. Yet very much the same. It astounds me how much someone can change and still be exactly the same. Only some people have the privilege of not changing, only the special ones remain untouched by time. It is truly a rare gift of life.

Yet he has changed. He's wiser, taller. He's exactly the person I thought he would be back then. He became his future self. A bit more stoic and stern and stiff and a bit of a snob but the same Seungmin I've always known. It's good to know some of us haven't changed. It's relieving.

I can’t help but feel pity for him, so I don’t reply. I wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

Gladly, Miyoung is there to save the conversation.

“Felix and Hyunjin are at the beach, they'll be home soon.”

I scoff. I haven't heard those names in a while.

“But where are the others?” I ask. “Where are Jinyoung and Sooyoung and the rest?” _Their parents, my fake uncle and aunts._ The people I’ve known my whole life, my parents’ childhood friends. I was expecting them to be here, like every summer. I can’t seem to find them anywhere now.

“I'm sorry they couldn't be here,” she says apologetically. There is pity gleaming in her glass-like eyes. “This summer is just for the four of you.”

I gulp. The word _four_ makes me uncomfortable and I quiver, like we’re still a group of friends somehow. “It's fine,” I say. “I saw them five months ago, at Father's funeral.” They were dressed in black, somber faces and grim words. Nothing like the people they always used to be. I think Father's funeral changed us all. It forced us to see each other in ways we never thought of, in ways we never wanted to: that was the first time I saw any of them cry. It was heartbreaking and overwhelming. It was a nightmare.

As if reading my mind, she adds, “I'm sorry about your Father's funeral. He was an exceptional man.”

I nod, lopsidedly smiling. Seungmin nods as well, as if seconding her. I hate their pity just as much as Mom does, but at least I know how to deal with it.

Miyoung’s lips twitch: it must’ve felt like losing a son, someone you raised and saw them grow up. I hope she heals soon. I hope Mom does, too.

We hear the backdoor swing open. Sand blows in. Seungmin covers his eyes. An important amount of midday sunlight peeks in, just enough to light the somber kitchen. As if in a movie, two figures step in the house, hair flowing in the wind, pristine smiles on their faces. They both carry surfboards under their arms, and they’re both laughing, eyes curved into crescent moons.

I can’t help but gasp.

Their hairs are soaked and so are their legs, water dripping down their skin. Sand plastered all over their bodies like patches.

I turn around and face Seungmin, who just sits nonchalantly.

“Oh my gosh,” a voice behind me says. “Jisung.”

I stand up and redirect my sight to the voice, that husky, low, voice I’ve known my whole life. I am terrified of his reaction but I don’t let it show, as I never do.

Felix stares back at me, inspecting me from head to toes and smiling brightly. I hate being face to face with him, but I’m also immensely curious: what is he so euphoric about? I scowl, confused.

He doesn’t wait for a reply: he leans in and hugs me, his hands touching my back, his arms wrapping themselves around my thorax. He hugs me like we haven’t seen each other in a long time - which we haven’t - but it all feels too strange, too out of a dream. Too feigned. If I remember correctly, things didn’t end up nicely the last time we saw each other. Perhaps he forgot about it, but I heavily doubt that. It’s not like Felix to simply _forget_.

His embrace feels like it lasts an eternity, and in truth I don’t hug him back, my arms loosely hanging beside my body like two noodles: I’m feeling a mix of confusion and I’m astounded. He just smiles, ecstatic. At least he’s not much taller than me, just a few inches. We’ve remained the same, in a way.

I look at Felix. His sharp jawline, smiling face and chubby, freckled cheeks.

“You kept your hair blonde,” I remark. It shines with the light and it looks so soft, like cotton.

He shrugs. “It's what people liked the most.”

Hyunjin breaks into a smile as well, and greets me once Felix sets me aside. His hair is darker than I remembered, and he’s taller than I thought he would be: I look like a gnome next to him. Hyunjin’s like a tall skyscraper at this point: adolescence did him good. He has grown some muscles for himself too, his sleeveless shirt revealing tonified biceps. He looks like a younger version of his father, but still has his characteristic grin.

“I heard you started modelling,” I tell him. “Is that true?”

Hyunjin smiles, embarrassed. “It’s just a part time job, until I know what I want to do with my life.”

They both sit at the table, Felix taking the seat next to mine and Hyunjin next to Seungmin. Miyoung proudly places her perfectly-cooked tteokbokki in the middle of the wooden table, right in front of us like a trophy. She’s an exceptional cook with such an exquisite taste in food. The smell of the tteokbokki brings me back, and I momentarily feel like I’m thirteen again. But again, I’m not. That’s all behind me now.

“I heard about your Father’s passing,” Felix says midway through lunch. He looks pitiful. “I’m really sorry.”

I don’t say anything, just nod with my mouth full and my cheeks puffed. I feel my lip twitch but I don't think anyone notices how uncomfortable talking about my late Father makes me feel.

Miyoung’s mouth makes a straight line, but then she shows all her teeth and goes forward, doing what she knows best and saving me from my perdition.

“Unlike Hyunjin, Felix already knows what he wants to study,” she announces. She is always so proud of us, just like she was with our parents: we’re like grand kids to her.

Felix smiles sheepishly, “That’s right,” he says. “I want to be a preschool teacher,” he confirms. “I love kids, I think they’re adorable.”

I wouldn’t have picked a better job for him. It just suits him completely.

“I’m happy for you,” says Seungmin, cordially.

I don’t say anything. I feel Felix’s eyes on me but I don’t look back at him, just focus on eating and getting out of there.

I want to look back at him though. I want to gaze at his sun-kissed skin, his sandy hair, his body wired with energy and enthusiasm and ecstasy. When I looked at him, I always felt he wanted something from me, like he was searching in me for an emotion, some kind of reply. I could never figure it out, what he really wanted from me. Back then, I could’ve looked at him forever.

Now, I don’t even dare to raise my sight from my plate. I don’t want to look back at him.

So, I stand up, I turn to the backdoor and run.

 

We’ve changed. We’re the same but we’re not, and we’ll never be able to go back to the way we were, the way we used to be. I guess this is the beginning of us.

 

❦

Hyunjin was thunder. He was lightning and violet skies and grey clouds and riptides and melancholy. He was superstition and late night conversations. He was confessions and promises and board games and old movies and punk songs. He was smoothies and flip flops and surfboards and sunglasses. He was rebellion and revolution and sticking up for what’s right.

 

Seungmin was rain. He was raindrops and serenity and calmness and late spring afternoons and freshly baked bread and worn out journals. He was early mornings and calligraphy and old books and strong coffee and concentration and hard work. He was cute puppies and berets and relaxation.

 

Felix was constellations. He was sunflowers and stars and staying up all night and sunrises. He was starry nights and honey and the color yellow. He was flowers and butterflies and barefeet and warmth and laughs. He was piano music and dancing and surfing and vanilla scented candles. He was flushed cheeks and silk shirts and candies and bright colors and peace.

 

I was fields. I was candid photos and mint gum and patterned socks and jasmine and crooked smiles. I was blueberries and satisfaction and phoenixes and campfires. I was mockingbirds and passion and writing and nostalgia and loyalty. I was leadership and choice making and determination.

 

And together, we were _us_ : perfect in our own way. What we loved about our group was how nobody else could understand us, except ourselves.

 

Together, we were one. One for all and all for one.

 

But thunder and rain and constellations and fields are different things, and they don’t belong together: they are too far apart anyways.

 

❦

I just run. I don’t know where I’m going, I just want to go _far_. As far as my feet can get me. I want to get away from it all, if it even is possible. I don’t want to see Felix. I don’t want to see Hyunjin. I don’t want to see Seungmin.

I don’t want to see anyone right now. I don’t want anyone to see me.

 

The afternoon is warm, and it’s a perfect day to go surfing or just simply sprawl on the sand, but I don’t head towards the beach. I’m not in the mood.

I go to the center of Hallim, and find myself surrounded by the unknown: the town has changed a lot since I left. A part of me barely recognizes it anymore.

But it has remained the same in a way. After all, the cinema’s still there, and so are the supermarket and the park and the people. It still makes me feel safe.

There’s nothing interesting in the cinema right now, no movie I want to watch, so I don’t go there.

I don’t do much that afternoon, just hope no one comes for me. I know my way around pretty well and I don’t need anyone’s help. Just the thought of going back to the house makes me feel uneasy. The thought of going back and seeing their faces again - how much we’ve changed - repulses me.

 

I don’t see any of them all afternoon. I don’t want to. I distance myself from anything that will make me unwillingly go back to that summer. Except, of course, _everything_ reminds me of that summer. The sole thought of being back in Hallim inevitably makes me think of the past years, the summers I wasn’t here but instead home, crying myself to sleep every single night, asking and telling myself - convincingly - that everything that had happened between us _that_ summer had been my fault. That I had separated us. And that I was the one who had to suffer on my own.

I was wrong of course: it took me years to see that. It took me the loss of my Father to open up my eyes to what I had, and what I could lose.

I hadn’t only lost them, but they had lost me.

 

Felix finds me by the time the sun is setting over the horizon, hiding itself behind the sea. I am sitting on the sand, at the beach, hoping time goes by sooner that it does. I barely recognize Felix walking towards me. He looks tired.

“You’ve been gone all day,” he says, once he gets closer. He pants, letting himself fall next to me on the sand. His proximity makes me feel uncomfortable but he doesn’t seem to notice this.

I don’t say anything: I let him deduce the answer.

“How’s Chaewon?” I ask. “Are you still as close?” _as you used to be._ I hope she remembers me.

“Yeah, but she’s still as annoying as ever,” he chuckles, “As it always is between twins.” Of course I wouldn’t know because I don’t have one. And Doyoung’s been gone for so long.

Sometimes I forget it wasn’t always just Mom and me.

“Why are you acting like this?” I catch him off guard.

“What do you mean?” He asks, perplexed. His innocence infuriates me.

“Like everything’s okay between us.”

The late afternoon breeze is crisp and chilly and I quiver. Felix doesn’t look back at me, he just stares at the ocean and the waves crashing onto the sand. Or maybe, he’s just watching how the sun hides behind the water.

His face is lit, the sunset kissing his skin, his freckles.

It’s a bit breathtaking but I don’t allow myself to think about his face fractions much longer.

His smile falters. “Because it is, everything’s okay between us.”

“But it’s not.”

“To me it is, and it should to you too,” he replies. “I let it go and so should you.”

He doesn’t say anything for what seems like half an hour. I don’t, either.

_If it only were that easy._

“You’ve changed, Ji,” he says, voice low. I haven’t heard that nickname in so long. It somehow makes me feel warm inside. It snatches my breath away. “I have too but,” he stops briefly. His face falls, the smile is nowhere to be found. He rubs his hand on his hair, as if finding the right words to say, like he doesn’t want to screw up. “I barely recognized you today. You’re more mature, more like an adult.”

“That’s what I am.”

Felix nods. “Yes. But that’s what you said you never would become.”

“I’m sorry for growing up and seeing the world as it really is.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” the smile returns to his face, but it’s only momentaneous. “What matters is that you’re home. We’re all together again.” His eyes shimmer; he lives a fantasy.

I don’t want to be part of it. “But we’re not, Felix. Nobody’s home.”

Felix doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: minor character death (this topic will appear throughout the au so pls bear this in mind while reading it)  
> remember that english is not my first language and that kudos/comments are always appreciated thank you :)  
> i'll try to update this by next weekend but i can't promise anything :/


	3. The Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["The Days" by Avicii](https://open.spotify.com/track/7HW01sQy5UOxyezzZg98nd?si=r7kiRFrsQKKxknmwbAYOcw)  
> We made a promise to never get old  
> You had a chance and you took it on me  
> And I made a promise that I couldn't keep  
> These are the days we've been waiting for  
> On days like these who could ask for more  
> Keep them coming 'cause we're not done yet  
> These are the days we won't regret  
> These are the days we won't forget  
> Rattle the cage and slam that door  
> And the world is calling us but not just yet  
> Out on the midnight the wild ones howl  
> The last of the lost boys have thrown in the towel  
> We used to believe we were stars aligned  
> You made me bleed when I look up and you're not around  
> But I'm in pieces, pick me up and put me together  
> These are the days we've been waiting for  
> Neither of us knows what's in store  
> You just roll your window down and place your bets  
> These are the days we won't regret  
> These are the days we'll never forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY I TOOK SO LONG !!!! i wasn't really pleased with the way it was coming out so i had to scrap it out and start over a couple of times !! i hope the wait was worth it ! i'm still not fully convinced so i might come back and change a few things hehe  
> something that I forgot to say, this au has a lot of symbolism. I’m a sucker for it, so just know that there will be plenty of them and that they’re all intentional. It’s fine if you can’t identify them all (ironically enough, i think this ch doesn't have much of it lol)  
> also, the song lyrics are lowkey important: they give you hints about what happened to them (if you haven’t realised this yet) and/or they tell you what the chapter is about.

Jisung sat at the back of the car alone for the first time since Doyoung left for college. He had gotten a honorary scholarship that he just couldn’t turn down, his mother had told him. The family had been so proud of Doyoung that they had hosted a big, expensive party with a banquet in his honor, which they seldom did. They had invited distant relatives and the house had been full for the first time in forever. It had been special not only to his parents — who showed Doyoung off every chance they had, to remark that they were great parents with an exemplary son — but to his brother as well: it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Doyoung had been lucky enough to get in. He was _happy_. Jisung was proud of him too, of course. He was very fond of his brother and he knew that that university was all he had ever worked hard for. And he had finally gotten in.

 

But that year had not only meant a change to Doyoung, but to Jisung as well. The most important one was being that of not seeing his brother everyday like he used to. He missed him already and he could perceive the emptiness of being without someone that had always represented safety to him. In truth, he didn’t really miss him: he _feared_ being without him. Now all the responsibilities and expectations would fall onto him and he wasn’t sure he could fill his older brother’s shoes. He felt he wasn’t as smart, as ideal.

 

Yet he felt _different_ despite it all: that year he had turned thirteen. The big number, the age that represented leaving childhood behind and stepping into adolescence — what many people called ‘the best years of their lives’ — and later on, adulthood. He felt like he could take on the world. Jisung could somehow feel himself growing taller, wiser. He wondered if his friends felt the exact same way.

 

He stared out the window, wishing that his older brother were by his side. Somehow the car seemed empty without him, despite the warm and cheerful company of his parents. He didn't want to sing anymore if it wasn't with his brother, and his mother could sense this.

“Don't worry Sungie, he'll be back next summer,” she promised. He wouldn't be back next summer or any other summer for that fact, but Jisung didn't know this yet. He also didn't know that _that_ precise summer was going to change the rest of his future.

He was lost in thought, and didn’t sing along with his mother like they used to; he wasn’t in the mood. The memories of the past summers with his brother balled up in his chest, and he felt like crying. So, he switched his attention to the changing scenery.

 

It was a wondrous place, a lovely town. He loved how time never seemed to pass there. They could lie down on the grass and feel like they had all the time in the world on their hands. It felt that way; summer was just a tad of infinity. He felt like he wouldn’t grow up, that neither of them would. Summer felt like it would last forever; be everlasting. They all wanted it that way, and deep down inside, in the bottom of their hearts, they yearned for it to one day be true.

 

He watched the trees, how they swayed in a warming breeze. Back in school season, he had always thought summer was far away, that it was unattainable, that it would never come. But now, summer was finally here. Music turned up to full volume. It was starting to feel like home.

 

He loved Hallim. It was his second home after all, and there was no other place on Earth he rather be than right there, with his bestest friends in their little corner of the world. It was a speck of fantasy, a bit of sunshine even in the smallest of places.

 

Jisung was eager to arrive. The aura there was happy on summer days. He dreamt, as the trees stood past the car and they got closer to Hallim, of all the moments he spent there, and they all were now stretched out into ambiance.

He felt the calmness of that place reaching him little by little. He could hear the birds chirping in the tallout trees as they made their way to the house. He sensed the energy of Hallim radiating onto him and he felt tangible, like the bubble was closing on him for protection. He heard the voices in his head urging him to come home fade out and there was nothing else there. Just bliss.

 

Felix, Hyunjin and Seungmin were all waiting for him on the lawn, staring out into the distance waiting to catch a glimpse of their friend, poking his head out the window and waving frantically, as he always did. Despite it all, he did so, with the brightest smile on his face. He was still going to have a great summer despite the absence of his older brother, and when he made out the silhouettes of his best friends in the distance, Jisung knew he was right.

 

It was all like a dream;

Felix, with his distinctive freckles and warm smile,

Hyunjin, with his crescent shaped eyes and shiny dark hair,

Seungmin, with his chubby cheeks and witty charm,

And Jisung, with his crooked teeth and unmistakable enthusiasm.

 

They hadn’t changed much that year; Hyunjin had grown a few inches taller and Seungmin had started wearing glasses, but apart from those insignificant details, they had remained the same.

They were still a group of friends, close as any group could be. They were still messy and loud and complicated and childish despite it all, and Jisung liked it that way. He liked being uncomprehended by adults because they were kids; they liked marking the difference between a world of responsibility and a world of fun.

 

“Ji!” Felix squealed, waving his tiny hand in the air. Jisung smiled, waving back. They all clustered around the car impatiently: they had waited all year to see their friend again.

He got out of the car and immediately went for the hug.

The hug. Three pair of arms hugging him so endearingly, so warmly and caringly and tightly. He felt as if the bubble had closed on them, to protect them from evil and the rest of the world. Jisung felt at home, not because he was in Hallim, but because he was where he was meant to be: surrounded by the group of friends he always felt at home with.

 

And so it felt as if time hadn’t touched them at all.

 

❦

 

Summer was barely starting. They had three whole months to lie on the sand and surf the waves and talk about life and laugh out loud and enjoy each other’s company before school stepped in and ruined the picture, until it destroyed the fun. It was always so sad to leave, parting and saying goodbye to the best days of the year, to the best group of people.

He always liked arrival day. Every year it was the same routine; arrive, unpack, beach, sleep. They would catch up on the year they were apart and the feeling of distance would fade and nothing was better than just feeling like time hadn’t gone by at all.

Jisung loved how it all never seemed to _change_.

 

❦

 

They sprawled on the warm sand, bathing in the afternoon sunshine. The glow radiated a honey-like yellow that covered them in a suffocating warmth. They were all golden in the sunlight: they had a shared desire to stay in the sun until their skin went numb and their eyes burned. Jisung loved it more than he could ever express.

They were lying on cotton blankets, legs spread and covered in sand. Eyes closed and lips curved: they loved the peacefulness.

“Aren't you going to get sunburned?” Jisung asked.

“No,” Hyunjin replied, eyes shut, an arm over his forehead. He was beginning to get tanned. “Even if I do get sunburned, I have the whole summer to cure myself and go sunbathing all over again.”

Jisung exchanged looks with Felix: they both knew their friend was insane. Seungmin frowned, but he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation: he was immersed in his book - an adventure book he was about to finish. He was gripping onto it tightly, his hand muscles were tense. Suddenly, he took off his glasses, holding the book closely to his heart and said, “It was sublime.” They chuckled: his friend could sometimes be such an actor. But they understood his passion for literature: Felix and Hyunjin felt that same passion with surfing, while Jisung felt it when writing.

“Let’s go,” Jisung said, standing up and stretching out his hand. The afternoon was starting to consume them little by little.

Felix, who had been lying next to him, glanced at his stretched hand, then at him for a moment and said, “Where are we going?”

He smiled foolishly, crooked teeth exposed, “I’ll race you to the shore,” he dared, standing up and taking a few steps forward. Then, he stopped, turning around, “You too.” Hyunjin growled at him, having interrupted his sunbathing, and Seungmin giggled, shoving his book aside and yanking his friend to his feet and following Jisung’s lead.

And then there they were, waddling and splashing each other in the ocean, listening to the waves lash onto the shore and yearning for the feeling of staying young forever to remain in their hearts. They longed for summer to never end and to stay in Hallim and never have to go back to the reality that drained them. There, they felt invincible. They were _untouchable_.

  


Soon, the sun etched against the outline of the ocean and they knew it was time to return home. They walked hand in hand, chatting and marching, but despite the laughs it was all bittersweet: their first day in Hallim had gone by in the blink of an eye. Jisung hoped the rest of the days would go by slower, almost imperceptibly.

They arrived shortly before dinner. They all systematically sat down at the big outdoor table in the first garden, candles standing on the center and a nice unblemished mantelpiece covering the underneath surface. The main dish was grilled meat cooked by their parents, but Miyoung had been kind enough to use some of the vegetables she had grown in her very own orcharch to prepare two salads, with the help of their moms.

They all laugh with bright smiles, enjoying the evening.

“How was your day at the beach, boys?” Jinyoung asked, chuckling. Hyunjin’s father was the cook for that day’s dinner, the responsible for the food.

“It was a lot of fun,” Jisung answered, truthfully.

“You could’ve invited Chaewon,” Dawon said to Felix. “Your sister spent all afternoon hanging out with Miyoung and the boys.” Felix nodded, obedient.

Chaewon poked out her tongue from the other side of the table. “I didn’t want to hang out with them anyways.”

Eventually, the conversation divided itself: the boys were in their own world, exchanging looks and raving with their mouths full. Jisung looked around; he felt light-headed with happiness. He popped a tomato in his mouth and smiled: this was his family, his uncles and aunts and his parents and his best friends. His brother was missing but nevertheless the feeling remained — that feeling of belonging. This was summer. This was ecstasy.

  
  


It was a beautiful summer night, twinkling stars sparsed over the cloudless dark blue sky. Jisung felt pity going to sleep when such beauty was out and unappreciated. Lying on his bed, unable to fall asleep, he looked over at Seungmin, already asleep and snoring. Hyunjin was out, too. Dead silent.

Jisung loved sleeping next to Felix, he loved watching him fall asleep and seeing that splatter of freckles glowing in the dark. His own little constellation, he always had the idea that it gleamed just for him. Each star was unique, each freckle different from the other.

Felix smiled over at him, watching his eyes gleam underneath the dim moonlight. They spoke a language only they understood. They liked it that way.

Without saying much, they tiptoed out of their room, down the stairs and out of the house in full pajamas, eyes wide open.

It was midnight. Somehow, Jisung felt the stars were shining just for both of them, for them to appreciate its ethereal beauty because they were the only ones who would.

They lay on the grass in the second garden, just stargazing. Felix looked so beautiful bathed in moonlight, his eyes sparkled more than the stars in the sky and Jisung couldn’t help himself from glancing at him every once in a while, just admiring his friend’s enthusiasm over the astronomical bodies hanging above them, hundred of thousands of miles away. Yet they felt so close, like they could stretch their hands and grab a handful of them, to keep them in their pockets and save them for another day, for a starless night.

“It’s nice to do this again this year,” Felix said. His head was tilted backwards, eyes on the sky.

Jisung’s heart clenched. Then he felt warm. “We’ll always be able to do this, Lix.” He promised, lopsidedly smiling.

It was _their_ thing. Sure, they were a group of four, but Jisung always felt closer to Felix because he just simply understood him a tad better than the rest. He wouldn’t know how to explain it: maybe it was in the way they just always seemed to be thinking the same thing, or laughing at the smallest, insignificant things. They were twins in a way: after all, they were born just a day apart. It was as if a thread had been tied to them, to hold them together for the rest of their lives: they just had that _unbreakable_ bond.

They had done this every day, every year since they were six. He couldn’t remember how it had started, but he just knew it never stopped. He wouldn’t have wanted it to ever stop. It was their secret, sneaking out of the house to watch the stars. Besides, with the world full asleep, the calmness and peacefulness was absolute. They could hear the waves from afar, and picture them crashing onto the sand as if they were on the beach. It was magical.

“Look Ji!” Felix stood up, pointing at the sky, hyped. His voice was squeaky and filled with evident exhilaration. “A shooting star,” he gasped, enthused. “Quick! Make a wish.”

Jisung stood up, eyes focused on the sky: he caught a glimpse of a shooting star travelling through space, leaving a trace of twinkling dust. And then, it was gone.

Jisung wondered what Felix had wished for: he was one of those people who always wished the same thing, and he still hadn’t figured it out. He made a wish just in time before it vanished. He pictured his three best friends. He pictured Hallim and the beach and summer. He pictured himself as a grown up, the only thing that changed: the rest all remained the same as it had happened that afternoon. He pictured Felix, _smiling._

But his wish didn’t come true.

 

❦

I walk home alone. Felix decides to stay at the beach a few more minutes and I don’t insist: maybe he just needs some time to himself. I know I need it.

Hyunjin is waiting for me — us — on the porch, sitting on the stairs with his hands intertwined and a worried look. The light of the sunset barely touches him, and the shadows of the night seem to corner him like a starving mob.

“What’s up?” I ask. He doesn’t raise his sight to look at me. “Where’s Seungmin?”

“He’s inside, resting.” There’s something in his voice: it isn’t nonchalance, it isn’t disappointment nor concern. It’s something else i can't quite decipher; I can’t read him, nor his expression. I don’t know what he wants.

I frown. “Is dinner ready?”

He shakes his head, slightly. Is he disappointed? Is he _still_ mad at me? “I don’t get you.”

“Huh?”

He stands up, and faces me: he is stern. Expressionless. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he says sharply. Not loud but with intensity. “Why did you come back?” he asks, but it’s more of an internal thought. He then turns around and goes for the backdoor, but before entering the house, he stares at me one more time. He tries to figure me out, but fails. He has always failed.

Hyunjin does it all very quickly, and it doesn’t leave me time to respond, to act. “Well,” I say to myself, standing alone like a fool in the middle of the evening, “it’s nice to know I’m wanted.”

  
  


I toy with the food on my plate, bored out of my mind. I’m not part of the conversation and I don’t want to: I’m a stranger to that type of feigned chatter. Felix glances at me every once in a while and it annoys me: why can’t he leave me alone?

It isn’t until dinner’s over and bedtime comes around that I realize I haven’t unpacked yet, that I haven’t stepped a foot in the bedroom.

Our room, the only room upstairs. I used to always sleep by the window, the bed farthest from the door because it was next to the window. Felix slept next to me and Hyunjin on the other side, in the middle, and finally Seungmin, next to the door and the farthest from me. I used to loathe his snoring, it never seemed to let me sleep peacefully.

I growl, rolling my eyes. I go up the stairs without a single complaint, but my mind is busy with a million different reasons why I should run away and go home and accept that maybe Mom was wrong and that this was effectively a bad idea.

That night, for the first time in my life, I sleep on the other side of the bed, facing the wall. I won’t have to see Felix this way.

But I know, deep down inside, that I can’t snub him. He’s like the sun: I can’t avoid him.

Even after all these years, I don't know how to do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't be ghost readers: tell me what you think of it, tell me your opinion about the descriptions and the characters and how you think it will end and what happened between them !! i wanna know it all :D  
> the next chapter is longer and will probably compensate for how short this ch was ! it will eventually get better pls bear with me  
> ps: you need to get used to the time lapse between 2014 and the present. They’re parallel timelines and therefore the story will go back and forth as the action progresses (you'll be able to identify if you're in the past or in the present through the pov and the tenses !! the past is told in third person and a past tense while the present is told in the first person singular and it's in the present tense hehe). i just hope it isn't confusing.  
> REMINDER THAT ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE IM SORRY FOR THE SPELLING MISTAKES !!!


	4. Circus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Circus" by Taeyeon](https://open.spotify.com/track/1HVjqP22I8rGY1gyEqrEuy?si=k_ui4uRLQHef4Bq4CAFr3g)  
> It was very radiant,  
> Filled with light, always filled,  
> They cheer again towards us,  
> Cause you, your appearance, your smile,  
> Night that has come, that will soak me with a dream  
> I have to withstand each dizzying step  
> This fear that I’ve overcome alone  
> It shines even brighter, our night  
> Most of all, this is beautiful  
> My circus  
> It gets dizzy in front of my eyes at times  
> More dangerous it gets, more it heats up  
> How much more beautiful would our night be?  
> I’ll throw it at you, my heart  
> With no hesitation,  
> I give all of me to you,  
> I extend my hand, so I can fly towards you  
> Cause you, your two hands, your heart,  
> If you let me go  
> Fantasy crumbles, it will end  
> White clothes flutter, like flower leaves  
> When it gently blooms again in the distance  
> Comfortably as if walking on clouds  
> I’ll go towards you  
> I walk a bit more toward you  
> How much more riskier will each night be for us?  
> Exceptionally shining, my heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional tags for this ch: minor character death, smoking, swearing

Without really sleeping much that night, I wake up shortly before the sun is out. I sneak out of the house and make my way to the beach before anyone else wakes up: the four of them seem to rest peacefully and I don’t disrupt their sleep.

It's past five a.m. and the sun is beginning to rise, peeking from the horizon and staining the pink sky yellow. The air is brisk but oddly warm; I missed mornings like this one.

As I walk closer and closer to the beach, I can hear the sound of seagulls, the echo of the unceasing waves lashing the shore, and I can picture them stretching over the sand, wanting to reach me somehow.

The sun is almost completely out now. It makes me company despite the fact that I’m alone. The yellowish sky radiates a warm glow that reflects over the ocean. I sit by the water, feet a few inches away. I crouch down and trail my hand in the crystal water; it’s ice cold but it doesn’t make me flinch. I’m not cold despite it all. It calms me. My finger turns pink and numb. I don’t stop, gliding my finger from side to side and drawing figures and lines and waiting for time to pass by.

A huge wave surges up, defiant and untamed: perfect to surf. It arches flawlessly, leaping from the sea. I smile. It soon becomes small and insignificant and turns into foam, sliding away from me until it’s unrecognizable — until it erases the trace of its existence.

“What are you doing here?” I turn around: Felix stands against the familiar outline of the faraway quaint town. He looks cold, hands inside his oversized jacket and face flushed, lips pursed. He’s not wearing his pajamas; he has changed into some worn-out jeans and a flimsy shirt. Mornings in Hallim can be cold.

It’s like he found me somehow: it feels like he _wanted_ to find me, like he knew exactly where I’d be and wanting to catch me here. I turn back to the ocean. “You followed me.”

“That’s what I know how to do best.” He sits next to me, shivering, his honey-colored hair dishevelled and bright — I don’t know why he has kept it yellow even after all these years.

I focus on the horizon, and try to picture myself somewhere except here. I want to see myself at home, or in university, or with Doyoung, or even at my Father’s funeral. _Anywhere but here is better than just simply being here._ I close my eyes and make an effort to disappear, at least momentarily.

But I can’t, I fail: I inevitably picture myself in Hallim, sitting on the sand in the beach precisely as I’m doing right now. I can hear the waves, but a high-pitched shriek rises above them: Hyunjin throws himself on the sand and Seungmin falls over him like a domino. He tickles him until Hyunjin begs him to stop, in desperate need of air yet still laughing. Felix and I just look at them, laughing. We look at each other, he _beams_. I’ve never seen something similar. I’ve never seen such light being radiated with so much intensity.

But then I open my eyes again and Felix is still beside me, eyes glued on the horizon just watching the protruding sun and squinting his eyes. He won’t leave.

But then he speaks, as if anticipating the fact that I was going to push him away — like I know how to do best — and force him to leave me alone. His voice comes out softly and low. “Remember when we used to sneak out and watch the sunrise? We would take a long nap right after lunch to make up for the time we stayed awake,” he chuckles, but the laugh is soon turned into melancholy. The moment turns bittersweet. He shudders, brushing off an internal thought I can't decipher. I think I've lost my ability to read him after these five years.

“And watch the stars.” My voice tumbles out before I realize what I just said. Felix’s smile widens. It wasn’t my intention to follow his line of thought. “What are you doing here? What are you honestly doing here?” I say bluntly and blatantly, cutting the sweetness off and leaving just the bitterness: that’s something that I’m especially good at, turning every moment bitter. It’s a superpower I’ve perfectioned through years of pushing people away.

He shrugs. “I’m fulfilling my promise.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I know how to do. I keep promises and carry them out until they’re not promises anymore. Until they turn like memories and live within me.”

He wants me to understand him. He wants me to look beyond everything that has happened between us but I just can’t: I don’t know how to turn my back on something that changed me so deeply, cut right through me, and drove the people I loved away.

He wants to be near me but I don’t let him get too close: I refuse to let him in. I haven’t known how to let people in ever since it all came down. I simply don’t open up to people and let them in my sorrow and agony and anguish: I don’t want to bathe people with the problems that I know I have to go through alone. It was always meant to be this way; I was always meant to walk alone.

Still, I have to open up, because shutting off hurts more. Felix, of all people, understands. “I haven’t been able to sleep well lately.”

“Does this have to do with your Father’s passing?” His blonde hair gleams with the sunlight: it has remained untouched by time. It’s heartwarming.

“Maybe,” I say. I don’t look back at him, I look for an answer in my hands, running my fingers through the dampened sand. The tide has gone down and given us space.

We’ve been apart for so long, missing from each other’s lives, yet he reads me so well somehow, like after all these years that ability of his — that of reading me so unmistakably — hasn’t died out. I never thought it would be comforting, but it is.

“I saw the lip twitch yesterday when you talked about him,” he carries on. He’s always been very observant. _I should’ve known that upon those eyes, it wouldn’t go unnoticed._ “It's something you've been hiding for months now, how much you want to look like you're fine when you're actually not.”

“I am fine.”

“But you’re not, you just look like you’re fine.”

“God, can you just leave me alone for five minutes?” I snap. I need space. The feeling’s so overwhelming. It’s impossible for him to know me when we haven’t spoken in years, when we’ve been nothing but strangers. In the end, that’s all we really are: strangers with a shared past.

“But you don’t need time alone,” he says, ignoring the fact that I pushed him away once again. “You’ve been alone for so long already, Ji. You need to open up. That wound you have, so deep, it won’t heal if you keep opening it up. It’s gushing out a silent scream that you think no one seems to hear. But I can hear it.” His face takes on a vacant look. “Why won’t you let me stitch it close?”

I don’t dare to look back at him; I lack strength. He makes me so weak; he looks right through me and it makes me feel like I’m made of glass. It makes me feel vulnerable and sensitive and if I continue this way, the glass will shudder and break and then I’ll be gone. I’ll turn into shards of a glass nobody wants, of a worthless piece of trash. I’ll be left unwanted and unneeded and the wind will take me away and erase my existence and then I’ll be gone again.

The turquoise waves don’t try to reach me, but I gaze at them for the longest time. They crash onto the sand softly, as if afraid to break the sand like glass. Maybe the whole world is made of glass, and some people can see right through it and some can’t.

Maybe I’m just waiting for time to go by. The silence lingers.  _What am I so scared of?_

Felix defeats me, and I nod to appease him. “The last thing I told Father before he died was that I wanted to be a writer.”

 

❦

 

“Father, I want to be a writer.”

“I know,” he says, monotonous tone. He doesn’t raise his sight to meet with mine, it feels like he doesn’t dare look at me. Suddenly, the restaurant and the chatter and the waiters and the music fade out, and it’s just the two of us in complete darkness. A spotlight is on us, blinding my view beyond the table. The moment turns sour. “I knew when you walked through the doors of that college that I had lost you. I do not want that future for you, Jisung.”

“What do you mean, Father?” I inquire. Perhaps I’m just being naive. I wish I were blind to what’s coming. I wish I could fold it away and break it to pieces and scatter them around like paper and watch it disappear in the wind.

“You lacked the integrity to do any job right. I watched the way you cut corners on every little task, always taking the easy route. That stuff adds up, it shows you who you are. When your life is summed up, you will know that without integrity you become a zero sum. It takes courage to do what your brother did, it takes integrity. It takes to be a man. I never saw a man in you Jisung, I never saw a writer, just a coward. A writer is someone who does not care about the future, does not care about maintaining a family and thinking beyond themselves. They just think about now, about them. They are selfish.”

“I’m not selfish, Father,” I falter. My voice involuntarily loses its volume. The strength to go on leaves my body: I’m can’t carry on with this conversation. The betrayal and disappointment in his eyes is too much to bear. It pains me. He sees how worthless I am. I’ve never been a strong person in front of him: he has that characteristic ability to make me weak, _vulnerable_. I loathe it. Sometimes he makes me wish I didn’t exist in the first place. _You’ll never be like your brother. Look at Doyoung, why can’t you be like him?_

Neither of us say anything for the rest of the evening. There is lingering silence, it’s not awkward but instead disappointing: how a father and son can’t have a proper conversation. We have nothing to talk about because everything has already been said, one way or another: the silence between us speaks, too. It’s so loud, this silence, and I just know it’ll never leave. It was always meant to be this way, maybe we were always meant to be estranged.

His evident favoritism hurts, but his silence hurts more than his words.

 

❦

 

“I wanted to cry, but I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t give him any more of my tears. He didn’t _deserve_ my tears. He always made me doubt my worth, he made me doubt whether I could really change the world.” Tears well up in my eyes, but I don’t let them show. “Yet I cried myself to sleep that night, surrounded by darkness, wishing — although selfish — that my Father would leave me alone.”

“You didn’t mean that.”

“But I did.” I gasp. His comfort isn’t warm, it’s asphyxiating. “You don’t know what it’s like.” I belittle him. “I hated my Father because he wasn’t a father at all.”

We stare at each other for a brief moment.

Me, weak, rests of the pain I feel oozing down my cheeks. My eyes, red, evidently damaged by the topic of the conversation.

Him, nonchalant yet his eyes carry a concerned look. His mouth wants to say something but he won’t: he doubts too much.

This moment is serene but ephemeral.

Felix tries to hug me but I flinch, standing up in a rush and walking away. His pity. It makes me retch. I don’t need that. I don’t need him.

I was fine on my own. Opening up doesn’t heal; it slashes right through the deepest of my heart like an uninvited guest. It brings out the worst in me.

I feel colder than ever.

 

❦

 

“Let’s dye your hair,” Jisung proposed one rainy afternoon, after being confined inside and idling, wasting the day playing uno and making puzzles and waiting for the rain to cease falling and let them go outside. They were beginning to get bored. The day had been awful and neither of them could go to the beach or even play in the garden; they were both flooded and muddy. They personally didn’t care about getting wet and staining their clothes but they didn’t want to cause any trouble with the adults.

The living room floor had always been the most suitable location to play a board game or just lay down and gossip. The red stainless rug always lured them to the floor. That day, they were finishing a thousand piece puzzle, watching how the rain lulled outside mocking them with its thunder.

“Why?” Felix asked, raising his sight after unfortunately being unable to fit a piece into the puzzle. He stared at Jisung blankly.

Jisung shrugged. “Just because.” It wasn’t as if they were breaking the rules: just doing the unimaginable. “Makeovers are fun.”

Chaewon, who had been sitting on the couch minding her business and reading a teen pop magazine, obviously disagreed. “He’s gonna look absurd.” She simpered maliciously at her twin.

Felix frowned. He tried searching for an answer in his friends’ faces but Hyunjin and Seungmin were just as blank and unsure as he was. “Are you sure about this?”

“Positive.” It was enough to convince him. Felix would’ve done anything he asked: he trusted Jisung too much, too blindly and devotedly.

The only rule they broke was that of stealing — or really just borrowing — Seungmin’s mom hair dye that had been carelessly left out and that had tempted the boys beyond self control.

“Do you want to join us?” Jisung invited the rest of them. Chaewon rolled her eyes and returned to her magazine.

“Me.” Hyunjin said, but before he stood up, Seungmin held his wrist.

“Why don’t you help me finish this puzzle first?”

So he backed down, and then there were two.

But it was such a typical thing of them to do: making up stuff and doing it in the spur of the moment because they felt like it. They were both impulsive and had carefree spirits.

They took advantage of the communal nap the adults always took in the afternoons and began to dye his dark hair. Jisung refused to spill what hair color he would be giving Felix, so the younger was anxious. The process was arduous: Felix kept complaining about the excess of product on his hair —that kept sliding down his forehead— and that it itched him too much and asking when it would be over and why he had agreed to do that in the first place. Jisung’s reply was his laugh: despite it all they were having fun and even though he was no expert, he had confidence that everything would turn out fine. A total of three towels were stained and utterly ruined, together with two shirts and a single brush.

“How does it look?” Felix asked, hands over his eyes. A towel had nevertheless been placed on top of his hair to keep the intrigue rising and flowing.

Jisung snickered, drawing Felix’s hands away from his face. Felix bit his lip, nervous. “Let’s give the darkness some light!” He exclaimed dramatically, whisking the towel away with a single move.

Blonde. Felix’s hair was the color of sand, of honey, of the sun. It was bright and full of life, as if it were absolute light. Jisung kept the roots dark because he had thought it would look better that way, and he was right. The experiment had succeeded. Felix’s reaction was slow; he didn’t say anything at first, didn’t scream or cry or jolt Jisung for being insane. He just sat there, contemplating his new look in the mirror, mesmerized by the color and his best friend’s audacity to do such a thing.

Jisung knew right then that he loved it. Felix relaxed into a smile, now looking pleased with the result. He looked dazzling. The hair color highlighted his freckles and his sweet, light-brown eyes. Full of innocence. The stars twinkled in them. “You look great,” he said, running a hand through his hair. He wasn’t lying: effectively, Felix looked amazing. “I like it a lot.”

Felix’s smile widened, and he bit his lip. He was beaming _._ Shining, _glowing._ He radiated a new kind of light now. “I’ll keep it blonde as long as you like it. I don’t care about what people think of it except you. So if you like it, I’ll always keep it this way.”

And he became true to his words.

 

❦

 

I wake up to the sound of a piano being played. It comes from the living room and I fail to identify what song I’m hearing: I’m still half asleep. There is no one in the bedroom with me, I must’ve overslept.

Felix’s conversation at the beach remains in my mind. I try to shake my head away. I try to make the memory leave my head.

I lurch into the living room, tumbling down the creaking old wooden stairs with thuds. Felix sits by the piano, Miyoung closing her eyes and letting the music into her soul. She welcomes my presence with a smile.

I can hear the song clearly now: he plays “Hallelujah”. It brings me back to our childhood, our afternoons by the sea and the nights below the moonlit stars. It brings me back to the golden times, to a time when everything was were it was supposed to: I was home with my friends. I was where I belonged, with the people I was made to be with.

I miss the lost boys we used to be; always searching for adventure, living in a world of fantasy. Now those lost boys are all grown up.

Felix smiles, lips idly curved. His fingers press the keys delicately yet diligently. He’s an exceptional pianist, he always has been. I forgot how beautifully he used to play. The piano has come back to life and it’s all thanks to Felix.

When he’s done, Miyoung is the first one to praise him. “Bravo! That was splendid, Felix.” We clap, but Felix looks only at me. He wants my praise.

“Where are the rest?” I ask, giving Miyoung my whole attention. The clapping has ceased.

“They went to the convenience store. They will be coming soon and then we’ll have lunch.” Then she leaves to the kitchen and I follow, afraid to be left behind with Felix. I’m afraid of what he’ll say. So I avoid him, because it’s an easy route, a quick way out.

“You woke up late.” She places a used mug on the sink.

“Yeah,” I say, scratching the back of my hair. “I have a hard time falling asleep.” I yawn, closing my eyes momentarily and then opening them again: I wish it had all been a dream. I wish the encounter by the ocean wouldn’t have happened.

I wish a lot of things wouldn't have happened.

 

Lunch goes by smoother than the last few meals we had together: Hyunjin cracks a few jokes and asks morbid questions, Felix laughs louder and harder than before, Seungmin throws witty remarks every once in a while and Miyoung can’t help but smile at us. She just smiles. She makes everything feel like time never passed us by, like it didn’t roll over us and smother us with distance and space and the rest of our lives besides Hallim. But there is still an awkward feeling of consciously knowing there is an undeniable space between us, there are barriers we brought up to protect ourselves. Some topics will never meet the conversation. It’s impressive how little we are showing of ourselves to each other.

We are all strangers. The only thing tying us together is our past. That’s all it is now: a shared past. I don’t know these people I used to call my best friends.

 

After lunch, I help Miyoung wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. Felix and Hyunjin leave for the beach with their surfboards clutched under their arms and with the promise that they’ll return before dinner.

I ask Seungmin what his plans for the day are.

“I don’t know. I still need to finish my book.”

I sit down next to him on the couch. I sense that, even though we’re next to each other, we’re very far away. The distance between us is farther than ever before and it makes me feel pity towards the kids we used to be; the closeness is lost. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gone forever.

“Let’s go,” I say, holding his hand and yanking him up. He flinches, and draws his hand away, uncomfortable. “Let’s go to the center,” I propose. Afraid that he’ll turn me down and embarrass me, I add, “We have barely talked since we got here, and we’ve been apart for so long.” _which is true._ Why do I feel like I somehow miss him suddenly?

He reluctantly agrees, nodding but rolling his eyes without saying a single word, without complaining or looking for a way out. Maybe he doesn’t care, or just doesn’t have anything better to do than spend the afternoon with his _ex_ best friend. His nonchalance is infuriating and I’m blind to his intentions.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I went with Felix and Hyunjin. I wonder what they talk about when I’m not present: if they diss me, if they make fun of me or secretly confess that they both mutually hate my guts. I want to pretend that I don’t care but I do.

I wonder what goes through Seungmin’s mind: after all, he always was the thoughtful one of us, the quiet one with the bright mind. I wonder if he hates me as well. I wonder if I can mend this broken bond.

I wonder if I will be able to endure two more months of this uncertainty and inescapable solitude.

 

We amble along the unpaved street towards the center of Hallim. We’re not the only ones on a casual walk: people walk in one direction —towards the beach I suppose—, laughing a little, chatting as they go and walking past us in the opposite direction. I watch them, some heads down and lost in thought, some jogging and taking advantage of the wavering sun, that will unlikely stay for the rest of the day. It seems like a storm is coming, but it’s still sunny enough to go to the beach. The breeze is warm but chillier than usual.

I can hear Seungmin’s feet beside mine on the unpaved street. There are a few inches between us, and I feel like he likes the fact that there is distance. I loathe that.

“So Seungmin,” I say, breaking the silence that has lingered ever since we left the house. He doesn’t look at me, his sight on his own feet. The intrigue kills me. “Why did you come back?”

“Stop.” He cuts me off and we both stop walking. Time stops. He stares at me and I feel like he’s looking right into my soul. I petrify. “Please, I hate small talk.” It comes out softly, like a plead. The sincerity in his tone hits me.

To be honest, I do too. I’ve forgotten that about him — time does that to people: we tend to forget.

I nod. Just like that, the conversation dies. My hopes do too: I can’t save what doesn’t want to be saved. I just need to let it be.

A cold wind begins blowing. The gentle whisper of the wind soothingly makes way through the silence. The usual smell of flowers is dampened by the hazy humidity that seeps into the afternoon.

Seungmin’s mind is conflicted and troubled but he doesn’t let it show: he doesn’t let me in like he used to. He keeps his head down and bites his lower lip continuously. He looks like a silhouette, like he’s empty inside and the kid he once was turned around and walked away and all it left is the skin. Why do I feel like everything’s a burden between us? The closer I get, the farther he gets. It’s like he is repulsed by my mere presence. Yet he’s the only one who has been acting the most _normal_ around me. Upon arriving to Hallim, I expected everyone to treat me like I wasn’t supposed to be there, like I didn’t belong, like I shouldn’t have come back. Hyunjin was straightforward, but that’s just because that’s his nature: Seungmin is doing the exact same, but in his own way.

Five years ago we would’ve skipped down the street all the way to the center, or rush to see who got there first. We would’ve laughed and chat and smile and we would’ve looked like we _at least_ knew each other. Now, we just look like acquaintances. It’s disappointing.

It doesn’t take us long to reach the center. Though there are a few people and we’re not alone, it feels like we’re on our own, like this outline was created for us to be here together.

“Do you want to buy a slushie?” I ask, words springing out: we’re about to walk past the convenience store. His face lights up but only for a second, not more, and then it’s gone. The brief smile it’s gone as well yet they’re an evidence that he thought the same as me: it brought him back to the past.

We always used to do this: we were the ones in charge of buying the goods —which usually consisted of slushies and chips and cookies and candy and generally just junk food— and take them to the beach. We always did the same thing: buy one extra slushie and drink it on the way to the beach, so that they wouldn't suspect that we had bought one more yet always drinking more than the rest. They never accused us of anything because we were slushie drinking experts: drinking them fast without having a brain freeze was just one of our many talents. Back in the days we were proud of it, though looking at it now, it was insignificant. Everything used to make us happy. _I wish it still were that way._

Seungmin turns left and enters the convenience store without saying a word. I follow.

It doesn’t look like it used to: it’s darker and it looks like it has been left to rot. It’s like a kick back to reality, out of the fantasy: time has passed, things have changed. I’m not thirteen anymore. Seungmin is not my best friend anymore.

The store looks like it could use a hand of white paint: it’s walls have turned grey with dust. Spiderwebs corner every inch of it. Some ceiling lights have burned out and look like they could fall on us, dangling. It was always rather small but now it feels smaller somehow, like it has shrunk. The coziness is lost.

The man by the counter remembers me. “Hi, Jisung.”

I smile back, politely. It warms me to know Seulchan still owns the place and that he’s still around.

“It’s nice to see you again,” he continues, while Seungmin darts to the fridges: he has seen him yesterday, I remember.

I nod. I don’t know what to say, nothing comes to mind. So I say the stupidest thing I could ever come up with. “It’s been five years.” _I’ve grown in the meantime and now look like an adult. But my life is all a disarray of emotions and it isn’t quite on track yet._ He couldn’t possibly know that.

He smiles at me and it makes me feel like a little kid again, like I’m thirteen. “You’re a man now,” he points it out. I shrug, a tad uncomfortable and awkward.

Seungmin stops by the counter with two slushies clutched in his hands, and I pretend I’m not overwhelmed by the action: he still remembers my favourite flavour.

_We’ve gone back in time._

Seungmin pays with the money Miyoung gave us, but his silence lingers: he hasn’t said a single word in what seems like an eternity. It’s like he refuses to talk to me, like I’ve offended him just by breathing. I never thought I’d miss his voice.

“It’s nice to see that you two are still friends,” he says just before we walk out the door, and I turn back once more, looking into his eyes and wanting —just once and for a single minute— his words to be a truth.

 

Seungmin takes me to the park, the only place we’ve ever known. It’s not like he actually takes me there: he’s still silent and won’t talk, like his mouth is stitched close, I just follow his lead.

It is all very familiar. The mighty trees, old and thick and strong, have grown and arched and its leaves have turned a shade darker. Despite the fact that we’re in summer, it feels like we’ve somehow entered autumn when we walked through the rusty gates: the color brown dominates the landscape. The light streaks through the trees make everything feel like out of a movie. The sky vanishes there, it transforms into the green of the trees. The warmth of the summer afternoon is quite gone, and the first bite of the evening coldness pales my skin. It chills me. It is quieter there, though the birds above are calling, pecking for grubs, chirping. The smell of humidity intensifies, but it’s soothing. When the night falls, the shadow of the trees will blend with the sky; but for now, there is still a little bit of light. Within me, a little bit of hope rebirths.

The park was _never_ only a park to us. Though its former glory is gone, that place used to mean so much to the four of us; it used to be the recipient of our fantasy worlds. It used to be a maze, a castle, a town, towers and kingdoms, even Hogwarts: it was all these diverse universes shoved into a single concrete place in reality.

The breaking of the leaves underneath our feet as we walk through the park disrupt the unending silence. Walking along the park is a melancholic feeling; it’s a reality of how much I’ve lost and missed. The pathway is nothing more than dirt littered with random rocks. It has grown wider and has stretched, in a gentle decline, towards the center of the park. As we draw closer to the heart of it, the memories come back to me like an inescapable gust of wind: I can see myself, and I can see Felix and Hyunjin and Seungmin as well, eight year olds dashing through it and laughing, thinking that our happiness was everlasting. Back then the park seemed livelier somehow. I can recall it all from memory, and it makes me feel like I’ve never left in the first place.

A slight breeze rustles the leaves, making a handful of them sift down softly to the ground. The trees sway. The breeze warms me a bit, streak of beams of the remaining sunlight glowing on my skin.

A single bench lies under a lamppost, unoccupied and lonely: we’ve reached our destination. That bench was once a throne, a bed, a boat, a car, a submarine, a train, a subway: it used to be anything we wanted and used to take us anywhere we pleased. Our imagination was wild then, nothing like it is now. It had such a perfect location, not only because it was in the center of the park and therefore was the heart of it, but because it was close to everything. From there, you could see the playground and the carousel and the gates of the park and the entrance. It was a meeting point, a referential place. It still is the very center of it all, but it looks darker, eerier, mysterious somehow: I don’t know if it’s because of the lack of light or the fact that it looks old and barely used in years.

We sit, but it creaks as we do. It makes me flinch, scared that it’ll break. Seungmin obviously sits on the corner, the farthest from me. Nothing and no one will interrupt us here. It’s like we can be alone at last. There is absolute stillness, as if somehow _we’ve stopped in time._

The slushie turns my hand into ice. It’s delicious nevertheless, and my mouth tastes like strawberry. Seungmin’s done with his cherry flavored drink already.

He finally breaks the silence. “If you had the chance to do it all over again,” he starts, doubtful. He bites his lip once more before continuing, “Would you take it?”

His voice is sweet. His tongue and cheeks are red. It catches me off guard, and I blink a few too many times, perplexed. I don’t know how to answer, I don’t know what he wants me to say. If I say no, I’ll break his heart probably. If I say yes, I’ll break mine. “I don’t know.” Would I put myself through the pain again? Would I go through the laughs and the feeling of belonging and being found just to leave brokenhearted in the end? There is no correct answer here, he has played me a trick. I’ve let myself down; within me, deep down inside, I know the answer. “Would you?”

I feel stupid asking him the same question he has asked me, it sounds like I don’t know how to keep the conversation going. But I’m dying to know.

Seungmin sighs. Maybe he is tired of it all, just like me. Maybe we’re both haunted by what we left behind. “Yes,” he answers, certain. “Those were the best days of my life.”

“What about the pain?”

“Still worth it.”

Minutes tick by in absolute silence. My eyes land on the carousel standing still by the corner, shut off from the rest of the park like an outcast. It has been abandoned and left to rot, left to die unused and unwanted and turn to rust. It could fall to pieces any time and it makes my heart wrench: such beauty has been wasted and all it is now is a remembrance of the past.

It used to be a circus-themed carousel. It still is I suppose, but I can barely recognize it: the golden bars and roof have been peeled off by time and winters and all it has left is the grey cement underneath. Its once bright colours are now painted over with dust. I can hear the echoes of cheerful music that no longer play. I can see the carousel reassemble itself in my mind, all the vibrant colours coming back to life. Some parts of it are missing and darkness inescapably lies on everything. It had big mirrors and the typical horses were elephants and we used to think it was so original, and that’s why everyone loved it so much. There used to be a man always standing next to it with a bell in his hand, and children would reach down from their elephants and attempt to grab it to win the “big” prize — which was really just a free ride. It used to make us go wild for such a silly thing.

Felix’s eyes used to lit up every time he rode it. It felt as if it were his place in this world. His eyes gleamed and the splatter of freckles stood out from his face and he would beam as he always did, but brighter. Stronger. The happiness would intensify and radiate on the rest of us.

It used to be mesmerizing. It used to be utter bliss. I can still hear Felix’s contagious laugh, though faint, in the distance. I can picture Hyunjin’s crescent shaped eyes gazing at me and Seungmin’s smile. We used to be beautiful.

It made me feel like the night could last forever, that the stars would always shine for us with their radiant light. But sometimes we would get dizzy and the world of fantasy would turn into a blur and the lights would flash by and the beauty disappeared. It made me doubt what was real and everlasting and what was not. And then the fantasy would disappear and the world would drag us back to the park, to Hallim, out of the magic. Getting off was the worst feeling in the world.

Watching it all as it is now, it’s like the fantasy has finally crumbled down completely and died: all that there was is now gone, the magic is lost forever. A part of my heart dies. It hits me worse than ever, and I fight the want to cry. I know it still exists somewhere, in an alternative universe where we are still best friends, it still stands colorful against the rest of the park, I know children still ride it and that it's still in its glory. It makes me feel safe to think so at least.

Time is so mercilessly cruel. It has taken from me what I loved the most. It has stolen those precious memories and turned them into sadness, into a feeling of longing and needing something to come back, yet I know it never will. I hate what time has done to us, I hate how it wasn’t able to fix anything at all. That pains me even more. I can’t beg time to return me what I’ve lost, what is rightfully mine.

I turn to look at Seungmin; he’s been watching the carousel this whole time too. For a fleeting moment I see the face of thirteen year old Seungmin. But it is ephemeral, and then it’s gone.

It won’t ever come back.

“We are all strangers, trying to reconnect with our past selves, to the people we used to be. Maybe it was meant for us to be strangers with memories.”

His eyes pierce mine. “Why did you come back?” I ask once more.

He doesn’t answer.

I don’t want to confront him but he leaves me no choice: I want answers. I need to know what’s going through their minds. I’m lost in darkness. I want the world to stop spinning for five minutes.

“Is it because of me? Do you want to scream at me as well as Hyunjin did?”

“You don’t know shit,” he says. He’s not mad, just annoyed. His tone lowers, “Not everything is about you.”

“Then why did you come back? Huh?”

“For Felix’s sake,” he finally says, releasing a heavy breath. And it all makes sense. It’s so typical of Seungmin to think about everyone but himself; so _selfless._

“You, of all people, should be the one hating me the most.”

“Yet I am your only ally.”

He storms off and I don’t stop him. Why would I? We already said what had to be said between us. I watch him leave, walk through the gates of the park and turn to the house. He leaves me behind and I stay to contemplate the carousel a bit more. I watch the decay and the rests of a fantasy that isn’t there anymore, that hasn’t been there for the past five years.

Everyone grows up and leaves. Why do I keep lingering in the same place?

 

 

I return home alone a bit after the sun has set. The sky is black already. The cold has reached my bones and I shiver all the walk. Upon arriving, something feels strangely familiar: the exact same thing happened yesterday. This time though, Hyunjin doesn’t wait for me outside on the front porch. I wasn’t expecting him to, anyways.

Miyoung cooks samgyetang and it warms me up. Seungmin stares at me all the way through dinner for the first time since I arrived. It isn’t just immensely uncomfortable, but intimidating as well. I don’t dare look back at him and quietly drink the soup; the conversation seems to go on with Miyoung, Felix and Hyunjin, who talk about something meaningless I don’t care to pay attention to.

And it makes me wonder how much of it is actually real and not pretend. How come they are friends and the rest of us are complete strangers?

When the meal is over, Seungmin and Felix duck into the bedroom and say goodnight, justifying that they’re tired and that it’s been a long day for both of them. I help Miyoung wipe the table and rinse the dishes. Hyunjin heads backdoor and sits on the porch, I watch him through the window.

Miyoung says goodnight and leaves as well. Alone once again, I step onto the back porch, the paralyzing fear of confronting the past on my mind. Every time I look at Hyunjin I can’t help it, it’s like it glints in his brown eyes and it all brings me back to the day it all came down. I wish it wouldn’t be that way. I wish Hyunjin wouldn’t be the trigger to the past.

He clearly hears me and turns around to look, face tranquil and calm. It’s as if he was waiting for me, like he knew this moment would come and that it’d be inevitable. I knew it, too.

“Come,” he says softly, like a whisper. He stands up, hands in his pockets, and starts walking into the night. I don’t know where we are going but I don’t want to be left behind.

We go to the gazebo in the second garden. It’s still looks elegant and delicate and breathtaking, even with lack of light. Dark surrounds us but the moonlit sky doesn’t let us surrender to the black of the night. It illuminates enough to let me distinguish a faint grin on Hyunjin’s face.

He leans against the white rails and I stand in front, expectant. He takes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket and lights one.

“You smoke now?” It catches me off guard. Somehow I wasn’t expecting that. He offers me one but I shake my head, disgusted.

He shrugs. “Sometimes,” he says. He takes in two quick and short draws of the cigarette before adding. “Only when I’m stressed or troubled or just really want to forget everything for a while.”

“Last time I checked, you stole booze from your parents.”

He chuckles, eyes momentarily closed. Then opened again. “Yeah, I was a rebel kid. Always looking for trouble.” _Always looking for a distraction, a way out of the expectations._ I never blamed him for his actions, even though I couldn’t quite relate to how it felt like to be him. How it felt like to have those parents and that inheritance.

I nod. _A little rascal_ , that’s what the adults used to call him back in the days. That nickname is long forgotten now: he has proven himself to be more than his actions. His heart of gold prevails. That’s all he really was: a heart of gold with good intentions.

“I know what you’re asking yourself.” He releases the smoke through the nose. “I came back for Felix.” He answers my question, and now I don’t even have to ask him. But then he throws a bomb, one I wasn’t expecting to be thrown so fast and carelessly. “He was the most heartbroken one of us.”

The bomb explodes. My heart clenches. Everything feels heavy. I knew that. I just don’t like thinking about it.

But he continues as if nothing has happened, as if what he just said meant nothing and didn’t affect me whatsoever. “He had this childlike innocence, he still has,” he says, taking another draw of the cigarette, this time longer. He’s so tall and his hair blends with the night; it’s so dark and shiny and it looks exactly the way it used to. “Well,” he exhales, “You know that.”

I nod. He makes me feel tongue tied, intimidated, like his presence is godly and I’m never going to be any good. Not worthless like my Father made me feel, but instead _inferior_. He takes the lead in the conversation and I follow.

“You’ve quiet down,” he chuckles. “That’s nice I like that.”

I scowl, but stay rooted to the ground. Why do I feel so defenseless?

“What do you want?” I ask, voice sharp. “Why didn’t you want me back?”

Hyunjin stomps the cigarette against the white of the gazebo and scrubs the spot with his shirt. Then, he stares back at me. He makes me look petulant. “I didn’t want to see you again.” Understandable. “I was afraid that you’d turn everything back to the way it was, to the way that summer went down.”

The ache of that summer comes and goes but staring at Hyunjin, it feels like it’ll always stay within me. It’ll never fade, never leave me alone. He is a reminder of it. The person he is now is a reflection of what happened. I turn away, eyes crystallized and ready to cry.

_He hasn’t broken me. I’ve been broken for a very long time._

He steps off the gazebo but before disappearing he turns around once more. “I am sorry about your father. He was like an uncle to me.” And then he vanishes.

It is a beautiful night. The darkness surrounds me but I'm not scared. I'm not cold anymore. I'm part of the night.

Seungmin's voice echoes in my mind.

_If you had the chance to do it all over again, would you take it?_

I picture us, the perfect group of friends. The people we used to be. Thirteen year olds with aspirations and fantasies and dreams and the idea that growing up was far away and unreachable. We were beautiful, even when the tragedy hit and we broke apart, it was graceful. Wondrous. Heavenly.

If I had the chance to do it over again, I would undoubtedly, devotedly and definitely take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i poured my heart into this chapter. it’s a bittersweet feeling, letting go yet holding on to it tightly, like i’m afraid to let go.  
> i’m so glad you all are liking this work, you have no idea how much i appreciate it. it somehow makes me feel like i’m not alone.  
> If you haven’t noticed this yet, i tend to write a bit poetic and metaphorically; i hope i don’t exceed myself. As a poet, it just comes easily to me to turn some parts of the au into a poem-like structure. I hope it doesn’t annoy you and I’ll try to avoid it as much as possible.  
> exams are coming up so i won't be able to update in a while :( but dw !! i'll do my best to post the next ch before may ends jdfkglh pls bear with me and be patient  
> i would love to know your thoughts on seungmin and hyunjin and just in general, as always pls remember english is not my first language and that i do try to improve ! kudos/comments are appreciated :)


	5. Like We Used To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Like We Used To" by The Rose](https://open.spotify.com/track/4MAFGQ2Xo8T2GmEaCEPSNI?si=POvp-J1-TBaz7E3V0m8FNQ)  
> The start of those days  
> Wrapped around me with warmth  
> You dressed nice and smiled at me  
> You greeted me and waved at me  
> Those memories, our memories  
> They make me look back suddenly.  
> Times when I prayed for tomorrow not to come  
> Times when I just sadly looked  
> Times when those faces were good  
> They pass by and I can’t stand it  
> I still can’t let you go like this  
> Sometimes, I heard about you  
> Even that made me happy  
> Those times were better  
> Those days were happier  
> Even moments I tried to forget you  
> But I couldn’t because of these feelings  
> Maybe this is better for you  
> But I still can’t reach out to you  
> So I blankly looked for a while  
> Sometimes, I heard about you  
> Even that made me happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took me so long to update !! i was busy with tests and stuff oof :/ i was also hella uninspired and sad so it took longer than i would've liked  
> something i forgot to say, if you have questions about the au or don’t understand something, you can always leave a comment and i’ll try to answer it as soon as possible ! but i won’t spoil it ofc :) and please, correct my spelling mistakes !! as english is not my first language i’m prone to make them unfortunately :( in advance, thank you for your help !

_I don’t know what it was about Hallim that made me feel so safe. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I knew the town like the palm of my hand, or that everything was so close that it felt like a bubble. The people felt close, too. Sometimes everything was too close, that it felt asphyxiating._

_Summer was the time of change and the time to move on. But to us, it was a limited place in heaven. It was a time which reflected that nothing would ever change between us, even if for the rest of the year we were apart._

_Although we were exhausted, had nothing and no idea of what the future held, at least we were together. At least we had each other through it all, through the hardships of growing up and facing reality._

_We had nothing, and yet we had it all because we were still together._

_That was all that mattered._

 

❦

Jisung was winning. He needed to get rid of his last remaining card and then he’d be the winner. He could taste the victory in the tip of his tongue, which he had unconsciously poked out as the game progressed. He was focused, concentrated, eyes on the goal and head in the game, paying attention to even the slightest of movements. His eyes skimmed from side to side, aware of his opponents and trying to deduce their next moves.

One more round, the last one. The decisive one. Three more players before him and then he’d be able to get rid of the single card, if the game allowed it. He was positive, the game was his to win. But then, it landed: a red, +2 card. Seungmin grinned, amplifying satisfaction with evident pleasure of the situation and mocking the rest of them, flaunting his success. Jisung’s jaw dropped, but he shortly furrowed his eyebrows in disbelief. This had to be the most intense _uno_ game he’d ever played. But Seungmin’s enjoyment didn’t last long: a blue, +2 followed. Felix’s card. Now it was his turn to mock. Jisung just sat there, jaw hanging, hands clammy and sweaty, his lone card covered against the white table.

And then it was Hyunjin’s turn. Jisung stared at him, pouting, impatiently waiting for his friend to take the fall. The future of the game depended on him. But he wasn’t merciful; he wanted to win just as much as Jisung. So his pleas were in vain.

Hyunjin held the card in his hand, arming the bomb. “Sorry Jisung,” he said, but he didn’t really mean it. He grinned and placed the card on top. And then it detonated.

A beautiful +4. Jisung’s worst enemy. The worst card in the whole game. His victory crumbled down in front of his eyes.

Seungmin, Felix and Hyunjin burst out into a laugh, mocking their friend of his disgrace and defeat. He shouldn’t have been too confident, too proud.

Jisung faked a cry, still pouting, and thinking it was utterly unfair. Of course it was not, he just despised losing. He had been so close, but he missed his chance; he just never saw that coming somehow.

They had been playing uno in the second garden, sitting down around a white table Miyoung had prepared for them under a tree, sheltering and shielding them from the deathly rays of the sun. The adults were taking their post lunch nap and Chaewon and the little ones were at the park, accompanied by Miyoung and some neighbors. The afternoon was warm and they were a bit hot, but it was mostly because of the intensity of the game.

Seungmin won in the end, thanks to his logic and his excellent deduction skills. Jisung had given up after his defeat, irrationally mad at himself for proclaiming a victory that never came, that never was his to celebrate. It was crushing and Seungmin kept rubbing it in.

But before sitting down and playing cards and turning the game into a tradition, every single summer with no exceptions, they used to collect ladybugs in the garden, back when Felix’s brothers were babies and barely babbled at all and Chaewon was a part of them: the first lost girl. Back then the air was warm, the grass was soft and they didn’t know the meaning of the word _growing up._ It used to be simpler. Now it was not more than a fond memory, something distant.

Jisung always loved the simplicity of it all, and never thought that, one day, it would be gone forever.

 

❦

“Quick, quick!” Jisung hissed, hurrying his friend. He glanced at his watch again: they had been gone for quite a while now, and had to get back to their friends soon.

“I’m coming,” Seungmin answered from the other side of the room: he had made his way to the back, where the dispenser was. They truly did know their way around the store pretty well. He emerged from one of the aisles and went to his friend, who was impatiently waiting for him by the pay counter. He had his hands busied with slushies from all different colors and flavors. Carrying five slushies in his hands and arms wasn’t an easy task, but after years of practice he dominated the tactic.

They walked together in route to the beach, underneath the scorching summer sun. Seungmin raved about the books he had read the previous year and about his favourite ones too. Jisung just loved listening to his friend, he had a spark in his eyes every time he talked about something he was passionate about. Together, they talked about imaginary worlds, inventing some on the way to the beach. The shared slushie was successfully finished before reaching their destination —as they always managed— and arrived just in time.

“You’re late.” Felix looked up at them, expectant, squinting his eyes because of the sun. He frowned. “You said it would only take a while, now all the good waves to surf are gone.” Felix snatched the watermelon slushie from Jisung’s hand and smiled: he wasn’t mad, he wasn’t annoyed, just pulling a prank. Jisung smiled back. “But really, you guys did take a while.”

“Yeah, where were you?” Hyunjin said, sitting up, eyes behind sunglasses: moments earlier, he had been sunbathing, unbothered. Seungmin handed him the slushie and sat down next to him on the sand.

Jisung sat on the sand as well, closing the circle. His eyes moved from sand to stone, from rock pools to breaking waves. He could hear the gulls with their high notes and the percussion of pebbles at the shoreline. The breeze was warm, gentle. The beach always allowed time to move fast and slow.

Despite the heat, Jisung found himself frozen in place once his eyes met the ocean. The waves rolled in white tipped, spreading themselves like fine lace over the beach after they crashed in their soft way. There was nothing noisy about them, yet they had sound. He swore no one but him could listen to the beautiful sound of the waves.

After they were all done with their afternoon snacks, the sun was setting over the horizon, the sky turning orange and yellow and pink. It was breathtaking, one of the most beautiful sunsets they had ever seen.

“Come on,” Jisung said, leaping and rushing forward, without looking back. Like a chain, Felix, Hyunjin and Seungmin followed him unquestionably, following his lead without a single complaint.

They had grown up by the ocean, listening to the lulling sound of the waves on the golden sand. They had grown up surfing, used to spending all their time at the beach that seemed to spread out forever. It felt endless.

Jisung was panting when he reached the shore, and subtly allowed his ankles to meet the water. It was cold, and it made him shiver but he remained on his spot. Shortly after, they were all in the water, paddling their way to Jisung.

“Come on,” he said, still breathless. He stretched out his hand in front of their circle and signaled them to do the same. They all stared at the hand for a few seconds, but soon they piled theirs on top of his and smiled, expectant, light gleaming in their eyes.

“Let’s make a promise right here, right now,” he said. “Let’s promise each other that, no matter what, we’ll always have summer. We’ll always be able to come back here and have the time of our lives. Together. Let’s promise that nothing will drift us away, that we will always find a way back to each other.”

They all exchanged looks before replying. Infinity stretched before them. Time stood still. “I promise!” They cheered in unison. Felix smiled at him, and Jisung felt confident. _They were forever._

But then reality would touch them. And there would be no turning back.

❦

“Do you know what I love the most about this?” Jisung asked Felix that night, lying under the company of a thousand stars. They were looking over them, guiding them out of reality.

It felt like a limbo. Felix shook his head, eyes blank. “I love spending it with you. I love your company.”

Felix relaxed into a smile: he felt the same way. The stars always made his eyes gleam in wonder, and Jisung loved gazing right into them, admiring his friend’s own little galaxy. He loved the constellations dripping from his nose and cheeks, the tiniest of stars splattered on his skin. Each freckle was distinctive, unique, and he just knew his friend had been kissed by angels.

“Did you talk to the moon?”

“Oh yes,” Jisung said, nodding. “The moon tells me the most marvelous things.”

“Like what? What did the moon say?”

“The moon said that every time you look at her, she feels blessed.”

“Why?”

“Because she loves your eyes. She loves the sparkle and the light. It doesn’t make her feel lonely.”

They didn’t need anything nor anyone else. They could’ve lay there forever, just sharing these moments of forgetting the world and closing their eyes and letting go — of feeling the weight on their shoulders drift off into the crispy air and vanish. They didn’t know that, every day, they yearned for the same thing: for the night to come so that they could be alone. Nobody could touch them this way, and they liked the feeling of disappearing of the phase of the earth and being everything yet nothing at all. Of feeling like they mattered yet wanting everyone to carry on with their lives without them. They could’ve fused into the ground, the grass, and it would’ve been just fine with them as long as they did it together.

People would’ve thought they were wasting time. But Felix had a way of stopping time, of freezing the image and making the world cease spinning —that’s why Jisung needed him by his side, always.

“Come,” he said, standing up and stretching out his hand. The first few rays of sunshine tinged over them, and soon the grass looked like it had been poured with gold. “Time to go to sleep.”

Felix took his hand, squeezing it lightly and beaming. And then, together, they ran.

 

❦

The next day, Jisung woke up wanting to go camping with the three of them. He had carefully planned it out in his head, every detail, every activity, the entirety of it: he just needed his parents’ permission. A bump on the road. Felix was in, of course. Hyunjin agreed, but complained: nature was just not up his alley. He hated sleeping bangs and slimy bugs and everything related to being disconnected from society. Seungmin reluctantly agreed, not wanting to be left behind and regretting it later on. Plus, all of them together, what could go wrong?

And so that night, a month and a half into summer —and with half the summer in front of them—, they set their tents in the second garden, they charged their flashlights and stuffed all kinds of junk food in their bags. They started a fire and lay in their sleeping bags, under the warm company of the stars in the darkest blue sky.

Hyunjin had been in charge of the ghost stories, Seungmin and Felix of the provisions, and Jisung of the adults’ permission and the surveillance; he had to take care of them and make sure there were no accidents involved. It sounded like such an easy task but it wasn’t; if anything happened, it would be his fault and his fault only.

He had originally intended for the group to camp in the woods, he had pictured mountains rising on the horizon, sheer rock striking down from the peaks. But Felix had been too scared of being far from the world he knew; he didn’t like being away from his family for too long. Besides, the only place they knew with mountains nearby was the town next to theirs, but it wasn’t precisely close to say; it would’ve taken them a whole day to get there walking. It would’ve ruined the fun and they would have wasted a full day. Not to say that their parents wouldn’t have allowed it by any means: they were very young and clumsy and needed supervision. They couldn’t take care of anyone but themselves. Yet it was a sign of independence, of breaking free and distancing themselves from the burden of living under their parents; for at least that night, they could breathe.

 

❦ _  
_

Hyunjin almost drowned once, the summer before it all went to hell. We were not more than twelve, and the tide that day had been raging, violent, turbulent. It hadn’t been a great day to surf, or to be at the beach at all, but Hyunjin had been stubborn as he always was. He had been surfing under no surveillance but mine and Felix’s; Seungmin hadn’t been there at the moment, but instead busy playing with the little ones and Chaewon back home. It had been just the three of us.

I remember screaming at him to get to the shore, afraid of the weather and the size of the waves, but the crashing of them onto the sand had been louder than my voice, and he had been so busy with taming a big wave that he couldn’t see me waving at him, arms swaying from side to side to catch his attention. It had been in vain.

I thought it was my responsibility; Hyunjin’s safety had been my responsibility. If he died, it would have been my fault. I would’ve felt that, anyways.

As the leader of the group, I had to be the one to save him when the wave crashed onto him and his head didn’t come back to the surface. I had to be the one to get him out because unlike Felix, I reacted fast. I didn’t paralyze and thought straight.

I remember bringing him to the shore, Felix crying his eyes out: he looked so hopeless. So anguished. He had frightened to death and had paralyzed, unable to move or speak. I wanted to hug him, to assure him that everything was fine and that Hyunjin was safe but I didn’t know that yet. So it had been all up to me.

The weight of the situation fell entirely on me. I doubted whether I was making the right choice by getting into the water to get him and not call for help. I acted fast but looking at it now, I don’t know if I was doing the right thing. I’m no expert, I was no expert back then and what if I failed? It had been the spur of the moment, I had mustered up a courage I didn’t know I had inside. I just kept believing that I could do it.

It was traumatic for the both of us. I always try not to think about it, and it’s something I’m still waiting for my mind to erase but knowing it never will.

I always had to take care of everything because that was my role.

No one ever asked me if I wanted to be the leader of our small group. I just was. It fitted me well though.

Miyoung expected me to keep the group together, just like Father had done; after all, we’re natural born leaders I guess. The Hans are leaders not because we want to, but because we have to; it’s expected from us.

I can’t remember a time when I was not the leader.

I loathe expectations. But what I loathe more is letting Miyoung down.

So I did what I was told, what was expected.

I became a leader.

❦

As the sun went down, the fire became bright and vivid. The night brought such a silence that the crackle of the campfire was all that could be heard. The flames and the red sparks both danced in the cool breeze. The heat from the campfire seemed to be sucked into the frigid air before ever reaching their frozen hands. They added more wood and poked it with long sticks. It seemed to die a little as if unsure of itself, sending feeble sparks to die in the air. But after a time it grew until the heat warmed them. It would have to last through the night.

They sat close on a log, their faces toasted warm and bodies relaxed. It was like the fire was charming the worries from them and sending them heaven bound along with the dark smoke. The fire projected long shadows on the surrounding area. The light cast by the flames danced across the dark trunks of the trees and the grass, twisting and curling in obscure shapes and providing a small radius of light. The fire itself was cracking and pulsating, the glowing embers seemed to move in rhythm with the flames. It was mesmerizing to watch, colours of orange and red gave way to yellow and white near the centre, where the emanating heat was the greatest.

The sky was the darkest shade of blue they had ever seen, revealing the most twinkling of stars hiding underneath it and spreading all over. Jisung felt as if he could feel them vibrating somehow, whispering in a way his ears couldn’t hear. The world was astonishing.

Jisung closed his eyes and smiled, feeling the wind blow his hair into a tousled mane. He then turned his attention back to the fire, blowing slowly into the red ashes. He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, pulling his coat closed and tucking his chin downward into his pullover. Felix leaned closer and rested his head on his shoulder, nuzzling.

“Come on, tell a ghost story, Hyunnie,” he urged, grinning.

For hours, laughs and shrieks erupted and resonated, hysterical and contagious. But then the atmosphere quieted down, the laughs faded, and the joy was replaced with a more somber feeling. Reality hit.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jisung asked, once they were all inside their sleeping bags, waiting to fall asleep to the sound of the wind, to the light and warmth of the fire. He felt that summer night would last forever.

“I wanna change the world,” Hyunjin said, answering first. It was immediate. “I wanna be remembered.”

“Don’t we all?” Seungmin chuckled silently, breaking the seriousness.

“I mean it. I want to be so much more than my parents planned for me.” His eyes glinted, stars spreaded out in them like he had a sky in his eyes. He was looking at something very far away from him, observing it from a distance but wanting that distance to shorten. Hyunjin had the desire to reach that dream and make it come true.

Jisung looked at him and understood Hyunjin right away; he wanted to be remembered, too. Felix was remarkably young and angelic, and would not understand what Hyunjin was trying to say. He was too innocent, too pure. Too blind.

Silence hanged in the air; it was a hopeful silence. One that made them wonder where the future would take them.

“I want to be happy,” Felix said, answering the question. “I want to still be happy.” His face looked so soft against the light of the flames.

“You will.” Felix lopsidedly smiled at Jisung, and suddenly the fire seemed to burn brighter.

Seungmin broke the sweetness of the moment. “We all want to change the world. But I think the beauty of it is not changing the world, but letting the world change us.”

“I don’t want to grow up.” Felix’s voice was laced with hope. And then, like dominoes they all followed.

“Me neither.”

“Ugh, never ever.”

“We won’t.” Jisung smiled. “We are Lost Boys. We don’t grow up.”

They undoubtedly had the Peter Pan syndrome: the uncontrollable and undeniable natural yearning to stay forever young at heart. Not immature but playful. Not naive but constantly curious and wondering and exploring. Disinterest towards responsibilities but so much more interested and invested in having a good time and learn about the world and go on adventures and, more importantly, get lost.

Precisely, they were lost boys who refused to grow up. Refused the responsibilities and expectations and maturity and the grown up world. It didn’t suit them, if wasn’t of their liking; they couldn’t live in it. Their hearts belonged in Neverland, in a fantasy and they weren’t made to be touched by the outside. Because if it ever did, the cruelty and crudity of reality would kill that fantasy and, consequently, kill the kid they had inside. It would destroy the innocence forever.

They did everything they could to prevent that innocence from being lost.

But they failed; those lost boys inevitably grew up.

 

 

 

 

Jisung and Felix sneaked out to the first garden once they made sure Hyunjin and Seungmin were fast asleep. They lay under the light of a thousand stars that were still twinkling, telling each other their dreams and then they drifted into the sky and made the world disappear and nothing mattered but them. And that was just fine; it was what usually happened before the crack of dawn. And they just never got tired of it.

“I’m afraid,” Felix said suddenly, a whisper in the dead of the night. He stared at Jisung and Jisung knew it was something serious, something that the younger was troubled by. The concern in his tone and his eyes was inescapable.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of the future. I’m afraid of being nothing.”

“Being no one,” he corrected.

Felix shook his head. “Being nothing.”

Jisung embraced him. He didn’t know what else to say, how to ease his troubled mind. He held him tight, his face against Jisung’s chest; he was _warm_ in the coldness of the night.

“Have you ever wondered,” Felix said, eyes on the sky, voice laced with wonder, “If the universe ever ends? Is it infinite?”

“It’s infinite, like us.”

Felix smiled. His face brightened up faster than the stars in the sky.

The moment felt infinite.

 

❦

The first rays of the morning sun woke them up, fire already died out. They rushed to the beach, wanting to be kissed by the sun and the water and the sand and the world. Chaewon and the little ones searched the entire bay for seashells, with the help of Miyoung. The adults rested on wooden beach chairs and raved about politics and such.

The four of them sat on a batik blanket, watching the others in silence. Hyunjin was sunbathing, as usual, next to a reading and highly entertained Seungmin.

Jisung was tired. His eyelids weighed a ton and it was plenty of effort keeping them from shutting completely. His sleep schedule was destroyed but it was the only time in the year that was acceptable for him to sleep late and consequently wake up late. His parents wouldn’t have allowed it if it were back home. But in Hallim, those restrictions had no power. Consequently, somehow his parents lacked authority as well.

Felix tucked his feet under the blanket and wiggled them, nonchalantly smiling. Jisung knew he was trying to keep him awake, to keep the smile on his face. He tried grabbing them but Felix kept wiggling them and freeing them from his grip: he loved with how little they could entertain themselves.

“Hey, stop shaking the blanket.” Hyunjin lay back and put his arm over his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

They stood silent for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Jisung scoffed at his friend’s indifference.

“There’s no time for sleeping. Half of the summer has already passed us by.”

“And I still need to tan.”

“But you’re already tanned.”

“It won’t last. It never does. The sun hates me,” he growled, his sunglasses hiding the rolling of his eyes.

Jisung took his shirt off and ran to meet the ocean, without waiting for his friends. Just as he predicted, they all followed him, sitting just before getting into the water, right before it fused with the sand. They all smiled at each other, hearts racing, breathing unevenly. The sun was hot against their skins. The air suffocatingly warm, burning their lungs. Their heads were scorching, their hairs tousled into manes. The seagulls above them disrupted the peace.

Hyunjin laughed and pushed Jisung into the water, splashing at him. Jisung laughed contagiously, making the rest of them laugh with him as he splashed Hyunjin in payback. The water was icy and salty and it made them shiver, but the fun was greater than the displeasure. It was hysterical and messy and desperate, but in their own little world, nothing else mattered.

 

 

They had lunch at the beach. There was a little stand on a wide grassy lawn just off the beach that served some amazingly cheap food but surprisingly delicious, without mentioning the best soft-serve ice cream in the entirety of Hallim. People there always seemed to squeal and laugh obnoxiously, soft beach music blaring through a pair of speakers. One of the main reasons they rarely ate there —the most important one of them all— was because it wasn’t precisely close; the beach was very wide and even though it wasn’t overpopulated, walking to the place under the scorching sun was not something the adults enjoyed doing. Plus, they preferred Miyoung’s domestic plates and her specialties.

 

 

And then, with the sun losing its morning intensity, the afternoon came, tinging the sky of a more orange tone. It was the perfect atmosphere to take a picture. It wasn’t something they did all the time, because they enjoyed the nuance of the emotion rather than the staring at a picture. They loved taking pictures of their shadows, for they were equal: just silhouettes against the sun, linings of bodies that looked the same yet they were distinctive. There was no wealth involved, no different social statuses. They were just entities of darkness, and they liked how their shadows reflected themselves on the sea and the sand and the beach. They liked how the pictures immortalized them, they had the idea that they would prevail in time and that one day, they would look back on them and smile.

The light shone on them and their faces glowed, their skins golden and entrancing against the sun. Felix’s skin was warm and sandy once Jisung intertwined their fingers together. Felix smiled, all of them holding hands and standing still against the afternoon, eyes shut and smiles curved, letting the sun bathe them completely and basking in the moment.

The moment would forever remain immortalized not just in a picture, but in their minds.

 

❦

_I miss the lost boys we used to be; always searching for adventure, living in a world of fantasy. Now those lost boys are all grown up and have left Neverland to get into the real world where fantasies don’t exist and they are forced to please people and expectations and be the version of themselves that people want them to be, but that they don’t. They don’t even remember that world of fun, they don’t remember Neverland and being lost boys: it’s a past that haunts them._

 

❦

Miyoung waits for me on the couch, going through a photo album. I don’t want to ask what she’s doing, who she’s looking at. I don’t want to act naive around her.

“Sorry I haven’t been in the house much,” I say, closing the backdoor behind me.

At night, right before dinner and right before the sun sets completely, I like to walk along the shore on the beach. It’s become a habit somehow, a routine, and just like that the first month in Hallim passes me by, quiet, deceivingly. But tonight, unlike the other nights, Miyoung waits for me to come home to start cooking.

She passes a few more photographs before replying. “It’s alright.” Her tone is sweet. So caring and nurturing. She locks her eyes in mine and pats the seat next to her on the couch. I obey.

She is going through our photo album. Six year old me stares at me from behind a chubby cheeked Felix, while holding hands with a tanned Hyunjin and a smiley Seungmin. I don’t remember that memory, but it must’ve been a good one cause our smiles are so genuine. So real.

“I haven’t been the best guest.”

She rakes a hand through my hair and pecks my forehead. She has a way of understanding the significance of things that it astonishes me. She is a listening ear, the one who would always wrap me in her love just with her soft face and kind words. “My house will always be open for you.”

“I’m also sorry I haven’t come back in five years.”

She nods. Miyoung has this ability to make me feel like a little kid again, and she seemingly takes me back in time. Back when she would tell us bedtime stories and hug us when we were reprimanded. Back when we were closer. I wish I wouldn’t have lost her as well.

The pictures are a time machine. One glance and I’m back in my preadolescent years with my life stretched before me, all the decisions that lay between my present self and my past self unravel, anything was possible back then. I wouldn’t have guessed that, in just a few years, I’d be sitting on a couch lonely and miserable, looking at a present I could’ve had if it hadn’t been for my fault. _I ruined the happiness._ Now the pictures are a reminder that time is cruel. It is a reminder of who I used to be, and no longer am.

 

❦

 

We were more complex and messy than people gave us credit for. We were understanding and childish and innocent beyond youth. But we were extremely smart and deeper than what we looked; people only liked seeing our outer shell. They didn't want to understand us, to untwist us and unravel our problems.

 

Felix seemed to have a childlike sense of innocence, but at the same time, he carried a sense of duality — as if something much bigger was on the other side of that innocence. He balanced that inner depth and deep understanding of the world and hid it behind a fantasy-like innocence; an innocence that was unique and characteristic of his and that didn’t exist in anyone else. It was a shield, a mask, but never a facade. It was both impressive and mesmerizing and interesting to see those two sides conveyed through a single person, how he had this distinguished duality inside. He had a face that made people wonder what he was feeling and thinking, those beautiful starkissed cheeks. He was mature yet he had a kid inside, always struggling to let it show.

 

Hyunjin was the opposite in a way. He was mature, but very much sensitive. He lived with the burden of showing his perfection. Hyunjin was chaos and perfection smudged into a single person. Self destructive and manipulative at times, but he never meant any harm to anyone; it was simply his misunderstood cry for help, evidence that he had enough and couldn’t keep it under control anymore. It happened sometimes, screws getting loose and madness cornering every edge of his buzzed mind.

 

Seungmin was different from them; there was great tenderness in him and he was passionate about discovering the secrets of the world and trying to understand it. What was striking was his enormous intelligence, but he also had a great sense of humor. He was a very shy person and self-protective, but he was filled with the one thing that drove him twenty-four hours a day: the love and appreciation for his friends. But back home, without them, he felt like he was nothing, he felt he lacked in so many ways. He was awfully introverted and extremely different, and back home, being different wasn’t a good thing; he wasn’t praised for his uniqueness unlike in Hallim.

 

They were all damaged, all of them looking for ways out of their daily lives; that’s why they matched so well, why they always were there for each other and never failed to be unconditional support. They all _needed_ the other to stay sane, to continue with the struggle and not give up. Their bond was so close and tight and strong that they were all they needed to keep on living the way they did, with so much hurt. Thanks to the friendship, they were able to keep up the expectations and responsibilities and that side their parents wanted to see. And summer was not only relaxation, it was a break from that torturing, spiraling daily life.

That friendship was a safe haven.

 

❦

 

We finish the photo album but by the time the last picture comes, Miyoung is already crying. She cries silently, weeping in melancholy, smiling through the tears. I want to ask her what’s wrong, but I know the reason behind her sobbing: sometimes, I miss us too.

She dismisses me, closing the album and putting it away. She gets into the kitchen and announces that dinner will be ready soon, a faint tear rolling down her wrinkled cheek.

 

As I make my way up the stairs, I catch a glimpse of a picture hanging at the end of the staircase, on the left, right before the entrance to our room.

It is a picture of the four of us, lying on the grass in the backyard, on a sunny day —I don't remember if it's from _that_ summer, or from which summer it is for that matter. I do remember the moment though, the happiness of basking next to them. The _euphoria_ I felt.

I'm in the middle, in between Felix and Hyunjin. Felix's eyes are shut, his lips closed but twitched upwards as if trying hard not to burst out a laugh, probably at something I said. His freckles gleam through the frame, and they twinkle like they always do. I'm smiling widely, teeth showing, facing Felix, my eyes open wide; I'm telling him something, probably a joke so that he'll laugh. I'm looking at him so happily it makes me sick. Hyunjin is besides me, smile white and pristine and very much like out of a magazine, hands on his stomach like it hurts from laughing too hard. Seungmin, next to Hyunjin, closes his eyes as well but his mouth is idly curved, and he looks nonchalant and tranquil, like he's in his own world but nevertheless sharing the moment with us.

 

We have changed.

 

 

 

 

After dinner, I escape to the beach again. The cold onshore breeze blows right through my sweater and I bow my head to one side, closing lashes weighed down to keep out the salty sting. The dampness of the sand is making its way through my skinny jeans and I hug my knees close to my chest. My hair falls loose about my forehead, tousled, tangled; in darkness it looks black. I can hear the waves lapping like the ticking of a more leisurely clock, but never telling me the time. Time does not exist.

I walk over the cool black sand to the inky water, letting it kiss my toes through my fingers.

_I wish time would stop ticking by. I wish it would stop drowning me._

I take another look at the beach. I want to bottle the scent and have seashells to touch. I want to recall the feel of the sand between my toes and the clarity of the ocean. I want to be able to come here in my dreams. I want to be able to leave it all untouched.

But in truth, I’ve been stuck in Hallim in my mind since I left. I haven’t been able to escape the pain of the parting, I have lost myself here, afraid and lonely and feeling the world crumble down on my shoulders.

Felix finds me, but he only adds more misery.

“Stop following me.”

He sits next to me on the sand, hugging his knees closer to his chest, burying his face in his legs. “Stop pushing me away.”

We stay silent: I don’t want to talk to him right now. I haven’t had time to heal. Heal _. Heal._

“Have you stopped using it?” I ask. “The anklet.”

“Me? Never,” Felix says, taking his left leg out and stretching it, revealing the ornament wrapped around his ankle. It glistens with the moonlight. “I could never stop wearing it. It is a part of who I am.”

“Who you were,” I correct.

“Am.” He shakes his head. _"This will help you heal_ , you said. _Whether you’re in pain or really sad just remember, I have the other end of the anklet. If you’re in pain, then I’m in pain, if you’re sad I’m sad, I’ll never leave you alone to suffer on your own. The anklet will help you heal._ I haven’t taken it off ever since.”

“You should’ve. I did.”

“But I didn’t, and now I know you’re in pain.”

Felix feels so familiar, as if I am remembering something that I have long forgotten. I’ve forgotten how much he knows me.

“Our hearts are very old friends,” he says. “They know each other well. I know you well.”

He reminds me of something quite beautifully out of place. He never really belonged in social standards and he never cared, and that’s what drew me to him. That’s why he knew me like if I were a part of himself.

But I need to heal on my own. I need a space he is not providing. He isn’t warm; he is suffocating. I feel like he is smoldering me, leaving me unconscious; it feels intrusive, asphyxiating.

I need my space. I need to be able to breathe on my own. It is lonely but I need loneliness to heal properly.

Time is standing still and I am waiting for someone to find me and bring me back into the world.

I don't want to be lonely anymore.

Felix’s eyes are on me.

I look back at him and see infinity twinkling in his eyes.

Maybe I’ve already been found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y’all like my little hsm reference at the beginning wink wink ;)  
> this chapter is rlly just to show their innocence, the innocence of youth. It is also the calm before the storm ... things are gonna take a turn in the next chapter :))))))  
> the drowning scene may not look as important but it’ll help you understand something later on wink wink ;)  
> Also i took it down a notch with the heavy description, pls tell me what you think of it !! i know it’s a bit lacking but the next chapter will make up for it i swear


	6. Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Blue" by Taeyeon](https://open.spotify.com/track/3R8iyJpmhI9ABDmTpetV2D?si=Vb-Qe3LYQsyctjhCAlD5AA)  
> White night is beautiful but  
> It’s even colder tonight  
> Match my gaze one more time  
> A bit more  
> My heart that was turning blue  
> Became a wilted scent  
> There’s no response when I call your name  
> It rings out like an echo  
> You are my blue  
> As if it was always like this  
> You are my blue  
> Fills me with longing  
> It’s beautiful even when it spreads  
> My day remains the same  
> A maze filled with you  
> As I get one step farther  
> My sighs get exceptionally deeper  
> Between the breaths that passes slowly  
> I feel like you will be there  
> Warmth that can’t be forgotten  
> Should I cry at the  
> Warm memories?  
> I’m still afraid  
> Pretending to be okay  
> I can’t do this  
> I’m still afraid  
> You are my blue  
> As if it was always like this  
> The word ‘love’  
> That word that resembles you  
> The word ‘love’  
> That word that can’t be reached  
> Heart that has passed by  
> Can’t be caught

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii it's me again! i know it's been a while, i'm so sorry about that !! my mental health has not been well lately so i was taking care of that and besides it was really hard to write again, especially this au which requires a lot of feelings and descriptions that just weren't coming out of me. i must say, this chapter in particular is v disappointing, it lacks a lot but i really tried, i honestly did. if it can make you feel anything at all, then i know my countless hours scrapping and rewriting it weren't in vain.  
> ALSO OMG HALFWAY TO CH 12 THIS IS GREAT !! things are about to get interesting y'all

_In those days, I felt that time was in my hands, I felt that place would remain unchanged for the rest of my life._

_There are things I wish I could forget, just like there are things I wish I could remember forever — there’s no in between. It was chaotic and catastrophic, but a blissful dream; the perfect, imperceptible line between a dream and a nightmare. It was both a paradise and hell._

_But I would go through hell all over again if I had the chance._

_Oh but it's all rather disappointing. I can't, and that makes me feel blue._

 

❦ _  
_

I get home a bit past eleven. The day has already gone to sleep and the stars are out and on like bulbs lighting the sky. Felix doesn’t come home with me; we all need some time alone, after all, and I think he needs it more than the rest of us. I don’t even persuade him to accompany me — I don’t even know if it’d work.

Miyoung is sleeping peacefully, so having an awkward encounter with her doesn’t concern me. I carefully try not to wake up the whole house by quietly climbing up the stairs but something catches me by surprise: I notice the door of our room is open, allowing the light to spread over the corridor and bathe the engulfing darkness.

Seungmin reads a book all by himself, sprawled on his bed. Hyunjin is nowhere to be found. Upon my presence, he lowers the book. “He’s taking a smoke,” he explains briefly, and proceeds to read as if I ceased existing.

I sigh, throwing myself on my bed.

“Where’s Felix?” He asks, sight still fixed on the pages of his book. The cover is brown and has golden illustrations; it looks like it’s either fantasy or sci-fi. Seungmin has always been into those kinds of books.

I sit on the bed now, giving my back to him. Through the window, the moonlight peeks in and I stare at the moon for a moment. Tomorrow, there’s gonna be a full moon. “He didn’t wanna come home just yet.” I’m not sure I wanted to either, but I had nowhere else to go.

“So now’s a good a time as any,” he says as if to himself and sighs, closing his book and leaving it on his nightstand. I can feel his piercing eyes on me. “We need to talk.”

It catches me off guard. I turn around to face him; he has seated down and faces me with such seriousness it intimidates me a bit. His tone is so firm and it’s a bit concerning. He makes me flinch. But I brush it off and shrug. “What do you wanna talk about?” I ask casually. I don’t know where this conversation will take me, but I guess I’ll have to find out.

Seungmin takes his time. Nobody’s rushing him and he knows that. But the silence seeps in and builds anxiety in me, which makes my heart beat worriedly faster. Finally, he speaks, “I think I’ve been a bit harsh on you, you know, avoiding you and everything.” Lately, he’s been snubbing me. He has been looking away and walking past me and replying monosyllably and simply nodding, and has been avoiding any kind of encounter with me. I’ve tried not to think about it, not to let it get to my head, but now that it comes up, it has been a bit hurtful. But it’s all coming from Seungmin which I understand completely.

“I think you weren’t harsh at all. It’s very honest,” I say, which is also true. “We all need space, you know.”

He shrugs. “Yeah well, it was still crap. It must be hard for you, I should be more considerate.” _My Father’s death._ But I’ve already grieved. “The people that love us never really leave,” he continues, hoping it’ll make things better, “It’s cheesy as fuck but it’s true. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this but I think you’re strong. Emotionally I mean.” He twiddles with his fingers, as if he’s apologizing for something he did wrong. It reminds me of the past.

“You think so?” I ask. “Why?”

“You still decided to go against your Father’s wish.” How does he remember every detail, every single thing I ever told him? It astounds me.

“Yeah well he wanted me to do something big with my life and I’m planning to, just in my own way.” I rest my head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, a hand raking my hair. I wish I could be staring at the stars right now.

The atmosphere between us is discerningly uncomfortable. He just touched a very delicate aspect of my life, one that is currently in the process of healing.

Seungmin hasn’t broken the eye contact. Looking at him now, he looks like an adult. He has changed. His facial features have sharpened. His way with words has changed. He used to be so philosophical, so serious and incomprehensible. I do not know why that has changed.

“Tell me about your father,” he starts. The conversation is not over yet. “Tell me how he made you feel.” He sits expectantly, hands together and straightened back.

“Tell you how he made me feel?” I repeat, huffing. “He made me feel worthless. I could never be like Doyoung, I could never make him proud. That pained him.”

“Why?”

I’m not usually like this: it’s a rare moment of both vulnerability and melancholy, and I have this urge to tell him how I’ve been feeling lately. Why am I opening up to him? “Because,” I say, “He thought I was a failure. I was never as good as Doyoung.”

“Did you want to be like Doyoung?”

“Of course,” I say. _For as long as I can remember_. “I really tried. I also wanted to be seen for who I was, not for who I was not.”

“Doesn’t everyone, though?” Opening up was an awful idea, I feel like I’ve let him in too deep. I have to get him out. But he won’t let me. “What about when he passed away?”

It slashes right through my heart, opening the wound again. And here I was thinking I’d finally closed it. “I wish I would’ve screamed.” I clench my jaw. “I was so mad at him for leaving me alone.”

“You were angry. Death does that to people.” The observation is nonchalant, almost a throw away line, but it’s also haunting.

“I was furious. How was I supposed to take care of everything on my own? I had to take care of Mum because Doyoung was far away. I had to help the house, I didn't want it to die without Father, I had to help everything around me stay alive. It was far too much to bear.” I’m talking to myself; those words don’t belong to me anymore now that I’ve set them free: my heart is no longer a cage.

A warm breeze blows in through the window to remind us that it’s still summer. _There is still time._

He knows he doesn’t have to keep pushing, and I know I have to keep my mouth shut. I’ve said too much I’m already regretting it.

But we used to be so open with each other.

“You’re more of a psychologist than a lawyer.” We both chuckle. His eyes turn into crescents. It’s the first time in a long while that I feel like things have gone back to the way they were.

“We haven't talked in a month. Like _really_ talked. We should do it more often.” Seungmin rests his head on the pillow, a faint smile on his face. But it falters. Now I truly feel like he’s an ally. “We don’t have much time.” to _reconnect._ Summer has gone by too fast.

I nod. The laughter fades, and the silence seeps in once more but it isn’t awkward; it just fills the space between us so that we don’t empty ourselves.

“I feel like you’re the one I can always talk to, it’s funny how that feeling hasn’t faded. I used to always be very open to you. I used to tell you everything first because I knew you’d listen.”

“I was always there for you.” As the leader, it was my job. Honestly, I always enjoyed listening to Seungmin the most: he always told me the most wonderful things about the universe and the sky and the mysteries of the world. Always talking about things he couldn’t reach.

“And I loved that. I appreciated that more than you could ever know,” he confesses, and it warms my heart.

Not every space needs to be filled with words. This space right here has been filled with so many untold feelings that there really isn’t anything else to say: we’ve said more than enough.

“Why the change of heart?” I ask.

“Nothing special,” he says, “I just thought you’re having it the hardest so far,” he explains, “and I don’t think that’s fair.”

His words are simple and truthful yet they are massively destructive to me. They change everything. They blow my mind but, of course, Hyunjin chooses that moment to enter the room and kill what is left of the conversation off.

❦

Waking up, the blinds are closed, the room is pitch black. I wish the world would’ve ended during the night. It would’ve been much simpler. At last, I would’ve been at peace.

I’ve started waking up late because of my incurable insomnia, past the groggy hours after the day formally starts. I like waking up alone, it helps the building tension inside of me ease off.

With the closed blinds, the light doesn’t touch me and it feels like the night hasn’t ended yet, like it is still yesterday. It feels like I’m stuck sometimes, darkness drowning me with its deafening silence.

But I hear the muffled sound of a piano playing downstairs, as if it is a wake up call. As if its duty is to bring me back into the world so the darkness doesn’t swallow me up completely. I fail to go back to sleep.

 

 

Felix is playing the piano when I reach the living room. It’s just the two of us in a house that is empty. “River Flows In You” by Yiruma fills every inch of the room, lighting it up the way the sun peeking through the window can’t. The piano sits facing the street, the room next to the entrance. On the quieter days — either rainy days or just days when we felt too tired to do anything but stay inside —, he would open the door as wide as it would go and play from the bottom of his heart, and let the music bounce off the walls and into every room of the old house. On those days, he would play pieces that still needed polishing, so that he wouldn’t forget how to play them. Felix wasn’t someone forgetful, but he always had this desire to never forget a piece, never to let them surrender against his short term memory.

I always wondered how he managed to play such beautiful pieces. They always felt his, despite being somebody else’s, because the intensity and dedication he played with made everyone always feel like he was born to do this. The piano was just an extension of his body and mind.

“It’s such a sad tune,” I remark. It’s nevertheless beautiful and he plays it diligently and flawlessly. Felix had composed a few melodies, but they were always sad, and it always made our hearts break. I never knew what was the reason behind that overflowing sadness.

But after some time, he just stopped trying, and stuck to playing existing pieces only. “It’s one of my favourite ones.” His smile blends with the sunlight. The warmth spreads over the room.

The row of ivory keys shimmer in the morning sun. And the sound they create stirs wonders in my soul. It makes me feel alive again.

I could listen to Felix playing the piano all day long. But then, unexpectedly, the song finishes. I was expecting it to go on forever.

“Miyoung told me something this morning,” he starts, taking the hands off the piano. “You were still sleeping, and the four of us were sitting down eating breakfast, which you never do.”

His words lure me forward, and I sit on the couch. His voice isn’t pure or smooth; it sounds ravaged, like it’s been through a lot. Like he’s been crying a lot. “What did she say?”

“There’s going to be a full moon tonight,” he says. His eyes lit up for what seems like a solid second, and then his eyes turn sad. “I wanna watch the moon with you.”

But he actually doesn’t. He wants to relive the past once more, he wants to drag me into the things we used to do when we were young and dumb. He wants to take me to a time where I felt like I knew myself. He can’t live like that anymore. He can’t live with unrealistic expectations.

“Felix, I-”

“Don’t you wanna watch it with me?” He frowns. Convincing me isn’t that easy. I don’t understand what he finds hard to believe; I’m not the person I used to be.

“No.” It tumbles out softly, but firmly.

The world stays still. Felix takes some time to reply, taken aback by my bluntness. “We haven’t done it in a really long time. Years have gone by. I miss it.” It’s genuine, but it fails to make me feel something. I’m numb to his charms.

“I don’t.” I lie. I know I have missed it, so much it hurts to admit it; lying is painless.

He leans back and stares at the ceiling. I turn away.

The clock ticks by. “Do it for old times sake.” He gazes at me as if trying to reach another world far from his.

The world is silent. I contemplate Felix as he slides his fingers along the piano, along the keys, and how his sight falls on the familiar room, frowning as the past seems to fume in front of our very own eyes. As if time hasn’t gone by at all, we remain together in an almost unconscious intimacy that we share in this unchanging moment.

I don’t want to lie anymore.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be there.”

 

❦

“If you had to fight a monster, any monster of your liking, with an unconventional weapon, which one would it be?”

It was a hot day, hotter than the previous ones. The four of them were sitting on the gazebo, waiting to eat lunch with the rest of their families in the first garden. The sun was splendidly deathly, especially to their _city_ skins that weren’t used to this much exposure of sun. Hyunjin had wasted two full brand new bottles of sunscreen that morning, afraid to end up covered in patches of sunburns and ruin his precious porcelain skin.

“What kind of question is that, Seungmin?” He applied more sunscreen on his face, taking care of his skin the way the rest of them didn’t bother. The headband on his hair looked funny.

“What about a screwdriver?” Jisung followed his line of thought.

“You’re gonna protect yourself with a screwdriver, is that so?” Seungmin huffed. He wasn’t taking his question seriously. Nobody could ever kill anybody with a harmless screwdriver.

“I could definitely kill a zombie with a screwdriver, I just impale it in its skull.”

“Yeah, well what if it bites you first? You’re dead meat,” Hyunjin butted in. “That’s why I’m choosing a wrist rocket. I’d use it from a safe distance.”

“That is a conventional weapon,” Seungmin said, and they all listened to his supposed knowledge of conventional and unconventional weapons. They weren’t sure they believed him, but they were just wasting time. And Seungmin sure spoke with such confidence that it made it undeniably impossible not to believe him. He just spoke like he knew too much about the topic.

“It is not.”

“I’d pick a hammer.” Felix spoke finally. “I’d love to smash a zombie’s skull.” He swung his fist in the air, demonstrating the action.

“Okay but why are you all picking zombies?” Seungmin sighed. He grinned, “I’m picking Godzilla.”

“There’s no way you could kill Godzilla, choose something realistic.” Hyunjin adjusted his falling sunglasses. His skin was oily and slimy due to the excess of sunscreen that still hadn’t dried.

“What’s realistic about the question?” he defended himself in between giggles, and they all soon followed, becoming a hysterical mess. Together, they could be so loud sometimes.

But then, their expressions soured. The remaining laughter faded until there was nothing but silence among them.

“What would you do if today was your last day to live?”

It was a question that had always meandered around Felix’s mind, but now it was as good a time as any, so he spit it out. It had been inside of him for far too long, waiting for the right moment.

“Probably tell my loved ones that I loved them.” To Seungmin, it sounded the most realistic and basic thing to do. As he never had any brothers of his own, he always cherished his parents above all because they were all he had. They had a beautifully close relationship, and Jisung just couldn’t relate; he wasn’t even close to Doyoung, his own brother, the person he had shared the room with his whole life.

“I’d do stuff I never dared to do before, like riding a rollercoaster or travel abroad.” Jisung had never been anywhere but there. It was a small world he lived in, unlike Hyunjin, who was more than used to travelling at least twice a year. In truth, it was all due to his father’s work, but he never hesitated to bring him too. After all, that would soon be Hyunjin’s life, filling his father’s shoes.

“I’d tell all my crushes that I liked them,” Hyunjin braved. He didn’t strike as a hopeless romantic, but they all bet he was super popular in school: he was rich, handsome and charismatic, what more could there possibly be?

“I’d want to spend the day with you,” Felix shared last. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, I wouldn’t want to do anything else that didn’t involve you guys, too.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jisung said. He was met with confused frowns. “If the world were to end in the future, or even tomorrow, let’s all come here, let’s all get together and share our last moments on Earth.” It sounded depressing, thinking about the end, but Jisung was sure that, if that day ever were to come, he wouldn’t be concerned or terrified because, with his best friends by his side, he felt calm. He felt like everything would always be alright as long as there were four of them as one.

 

❦

The sun’s already starting to set, embellishing the sky with tints of lilac and pink, together with yellow, orange and red. No stars are out yet, but they’ll sure come out tonight.

I hate beaches, but I love Hallim’s beach. I love the untamed waves. I love the golden coast, I love the seashells. There’s no other place in the world like this one. It feels like a state of mind, my utmost nirvana.

That’s why I feel like Hyunjin has violated my privacy when I see him sitting on the sand waving at me like he has been expecting me. It feels like he has uninvitedly barged into my mind somehow, and it angers me beyond reason.

He knows this as well.

“Looks like I found your secret lair,” he chuckles once I reach him. I don’t laugh. I don’t sit next to him on the sand. “So this is where you hide every day,” he deduces. Good observation. “Nice view.”

I’m blunt. “What do you want?” If he’s not here to surf, then what is he here for? The ocean waves don’t look too chaotic from my spot on the beach but I suppose that, beneath the surface, there is a potentially dangerous current. I want the rippling waves to drown out the thoughts in my head with its amplifying noise; nevertheless, it wouldn’t be louder than my mind. “If you are not here to surf, then why are you here?” He usually doesn’t come to the beach at this time of the day, and especially not alone; he’s used to surfing in the morning with Felix, because that’s what they do every single day. No exceptions.

The wind howls, so the silence between us is more bearable. It isn’t awkward nor uncomfortable, but tense. It builds anxiety in me and I loathe it. It won’t let me exhale. Finally, nonchalantly, he answers, voice low, “I think you avoid being alone with me.”

It’s like firing a gun in utter silence. The fired bullet effectively breaks the silence yet it’s deafening, and successfully strikes its target. Nevertheless, the target answers, as if he hadn’t just been shot dead. “What if I do?” My seething annoyance has reached its boiling point.

He turns dead serious now. He becomes intimidating, and I become his defenseless prey. He looks scary without the radiant light of the sun touching his face. Yet his eyes remain as tender as they always were. It’s a strange duality. “I’m not the villain, Jisung. I’m just like you.” I don’t understand him. “I’m like you,” he repeats, as if once wasn’t enough. “I, too, need my space.”

“Then why are you in my space!” I snap. I sound irrational, delusional even. There are too many things going on at once and I’m losing my grip of reality. Why does it seem to suddenly fuse with the past?

“Don’t see me as a villain,” he falters. He looks hurt, like I’m actually the one shooting bullets at him. But then he throws a bomb and, of course, it detonates perfectly. “I’m dwelling with the past, too.”

Unbidden tears hide behind my eyes. No matter how hard I try to move on, Hyunjin always manages to push me at least ten feet back. Every time I look at Hyunjin I can’t help it, it’s like it glints in his brown eyes and it all brings me back to the day it all came down. I wish it wouldn’t be that way. I wish Hyunjin wouldn’t be the trigger to the past. There’s nothing I can do now to change that.

In a way, I know — it was my fault.

It feels like we’re a few steps from replaying that day, the summer it all fell apart — even though something is clearly and evidently missing.

His eyes linger on mine for a moment. For a second, his dark brown eyes seem a shade lighter, like there’s light — hope, maybe — hidden deep within them. “I think my time here is over,” he finally stands up. He brushes the sand off his clothes and starts to walk away. He doesn’t have cruel intentions.

I don’t stop him. I watch him as his silhouette gradually turns smaller and smaller until he’s just an unrecognizable figure in the distance.

That’s when I finally allow the tears to roll down my face. I shut my eyes and feel as the tears stream down my cheeks, but it won’t be enough to let it all out — there’s too much pain inside of me. I need to spit it out. “Just because things could’ve been different it doesn’t mean they’d be better!” I shout, but he’s too far away to hear me.

 

❦

Already the stars glow as if they have kept a pocket of the daytime to shine all through the sky. The night is calm and quiet, but not enough to ease the storm in me. I don’t know how this night will end.

Felix waits for me in the second garden. _Like we used to_. His grin grows slowly into a broad smile: he thought I wouldn’t show up. Or maybe he was just too pumped to keep his happiness under control.

“Let’s not watch it here,” he says, once I reach him. “Let’s go to the beach. Tonight’s a special night.”

I shouldn't have come. He glows: I shouldn’t have lighted the fire. Yet the suspense is killing me; he has something he wants to tell me. I think I know where it all leads, but I guess I’m afraid of leaving Hallim without knowing for sure, without being a hundred percent certain of the answer. There are so many things I don’t know about Felix; how he has changed through the years is still a mystery I need to unravel. He’s an enigma I need to solve.

When we arrive at the beach, he leaves me behind and runs forward towards the shore at full speed, as if trying to catch up with the vast motionless ocean. Then he stops short, panting, trying to catch his breath. I can distinguish the anklet from afar, glinting just for me. The beach is just ours tonight.

As soon as his feet meet the ocean, and all the light disappears behind his eyes — touched by the starry night —, the useless worries that had been in my head become smaller than the dust in the universe and become nothing bigger than a grain of sand.

“What are you doing?” I allow myself to chuckle. He looks like he’s seeing the beach, the ocean, the waves, for the first time. The wonder and awe and admiration in his twinkling eyes is beyond exhilarating. The freckles dot his face like a constellation. I always wondered how many he had; they seem to spread over his face like a star map. He gazes at me, his ankles submerged underwater. He gazes at me as if waiting for me to do something; join him or leave.

I do neither of those things.

I walk a few steps forward and sit on the cold sand, almost the exact place Hyunjin sat this afternoon. It’s a fresh change of perspective. The beach looks beautiful tonight, it looks like the water has merged with the sand and spreads over the horizon, until what feels like the end of the world.

Felix stares at the sky, and I follow his eyes: the sky is alive tonight. It is alive with its raw energy. At times I feel it vibrating somehow, whispering in a way my ears cannot hear. I could stare at the sky forever.

Felix looks even more astonished than I do. I know he loves it more than I do. He gazes at those bright stars and the full moon and their pattern that seems so fixed and yet ever-changing, distant lights too unreachable and precious for words. There’s nothing like them. Then he smiles at me and the world seems ten times brighter. Ten times prettier.

That’s when I feel it seeping in, this excruciating pain I’ve been living with. I feel the void inside growing bigger, deeper. It’s an unstoppable shadow. Maybe I've been pushing people away because I needed space but I don't want to be empty anymore. Yet I don't want to let people in.

Felix sits next to me on the sand, curled up until his arms hug his knees closer to his chest. He hasn’t stopped staring at the sky, that seems to have hypnotised him. Everything looks right out of a dream, and I don’t ever want to wake up.

“I hope you have something to look up to when you are lost,” he says, breaking the everlasting silence of the night. “Something beautiful and comforting.” Felix’s voice is gentle and so insightful; it’s laced with undying hope.

“What do you look up to?”

“Um,” he starts quietly, glancing over at the ocean in front of him. It’s a white night. “I don’t know.” He says finally with a shrug, leaning back against the sand. He doesn’t want to spill it out just yet. He’s waiting for the right moment, I guess.

The wind howls against the rippling waves. It’s almost all black, like the world has lost its colour to the night, but the full moon shimmers on the surface of the water, tinging it white. It won’t let the darkness win. It's enchanting.

“Do you ever think about the past?” The words slip out, intentionally yet unintentionally, as if his brain-to-mouth filter disappeared. Then, the terror hits his eyes — fearing my answer —, and I bet his stomach ties itself in knots as he waits for my reaction. _Do you hold on to it?_

“Why would I?” It sounds aggressive, almost defensive, but I don’t mean to. It just caught me off guard. “The past is dust, not sand,” I say, grabbing a handful of sand and watching it sift down slowly through my fingers. It reminds me of time. “I can’t do anything with dust. It’s all here, yet nothing’s like it used to be; it’s deceiving. It all used to be right here, in front of our very own eyes. But when I try to touch it, the countless memories, it all falls apart. The only thing I can hold is what I have right now, the people I have right now. That includes the people we are now, the changed and grown up versions of the kids we used to be. Nothing else. So I try not thinking about who I used to be, thus, I do not think about the past. _At all._ ” I don’t want to ask him if he thinks about the past because I know he does. I can read it all over his chubby, freckled face.

“We could be so much more,” Felix says. The light in his eyes falters. “We’re complex and messy and all grown up but we’re still us. You need to stop hurting yourself over it.”

“You’re the one hurting yourself over it,” I reply in a soft voice, almost afraid to let the words out of my mouth, clutching my arms and wishing I could sink into the sand and disappear and never see the look on his face again, because I’ve seen it a million times and it hurts every time: it’s disillusion. It’s hurt. Like I just busted his bubble. And I thought I couldn’t hurt him anymore.

He’s waiting for the right time to crash. He has to hit rock bottom to get back up because that’s just the way Felix is. I wonder how many bottled up feelings he has and how many he needs to unbottle and let out.

He’s gonna drown.

I have to make him a favor.

“Crash onto me,” I say suddenly, jolting up and outstretching my arms as if to hug the world. The cold of the night violently hits me, as if to stop me. “I’m ready for you to destroy me. Go ahead, tear me apart, hurt me.” The wind tousels my hair and I can finally breathe.

“Jisung, stop.” It comes out as a plea. He holds my wrist down, ashamed. He’s blushing, but it’s just a manifestation of his nervousness.

“Crash onto me,” I repeat, feet rooted to the ground. “If you don’t hurt me, then who will?”

“What do you mean?” His voice is low, innocently sweet even. He loosens the grip.

“Felix, why don’t you hate me?” I blurt, being more honest than I ever was.

“I can't hate you, but for the longest time I tried.” He sighs, letting me go. He’s holding back tears.

I sit down again, this time closer to him, shoulders brushing each other; there’s still distance between us.

“I hurt you, I don’t deserve your kindness.” _I hurt everyone around me._

“I hurt myself too,” it sounds like a confession. Like he’s saying it aloud for the first time. “But I still choose to be kind, because it is an option.”

I thought I could make him hurt me with his words, but there’s no changing Felix. He just won’t let me break him down to his very core. It’s a very protective way of keeping everyone out.

But he’s been doing the same thing to me and I’ve had enough. I’ve shown him enough, even more than he would’ve liked to see. Coming here with him tonight was a bad idea and it’s true: I don’t know how to deal with the past. I don’t know how to merge all these hidden feelings into one. I lost that ability long ago.

“Ji, I-”

 _Stop reaching out to me_. “Stop calling me like that!” I snap, clenching my fists. But they are not loaded with fury, just a misunderstanding of my emerging feelings. Hallim has changed me. “It hurts, you keep filling my brain with all these memories, I hate it!” I can’t escape the past like this; he leaves me no way out.

“I’m trying to make you remember.”

“I’m trying to forget,” I confess in an almost inaudible whisper. My voice has lost its strength, and so has my body. I’m weak. I can’t go on like this anymore. I’ve been shutting that part of myself for the longest time. I thought I could go on a bit more, at least until I’m out of here.

I’m gonna burst. My heart will explode and its blood will gush all over the place with every single untold feeling. I don’t want him to see my decay. Why am I the only one hurting here? I can see right through him. “You always speak about leaving the past behind yet your eyes still sparkle when you look at me,” I say, my heart throbbing uncontrollably; it's pointless to keep avoiding this conversation because it will eventually come and pushing it away won't make it fade. It's better to get it over with.

“One doesn't just simply forget their first love,” he responds subtly. There is nostalgia in his voice. I know it’s a cherished memory he has.

That’s why I have to destroy it. “I did.” It comes out hurtful, but that’s exactly what I’m going for. I don’t know when this neverending venom started to grow in me, it just simply did; it has become a part of who I am. Those words hurt more than a dagger to the heart. Yet my intention is not to hurt him, just push him back and give me space.

Felix wants to weep.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he smiles. He smiles as if I haven’t hurt him with those words. As if he saw it coming somehow.

As if he predicted my action.

As if he knew I was trying to hurt him.

He smiles: we’re under the same sky at least. This night will become his new cherished memory.

“Even here, even damaged and broken, we’re blooming,” he says softly. “We’ll always bloom.”

“I don’t know about that, Felix.” I’m rotten inside. The inside of my body has wilted. He doesn’t see that, he doesn’t _want_ to see how black and lifeless my heart is. He sounds so sure of himself, but I can’t believe him.

But he continues, he has so much more to say. “Did you know stars shine because they’re in pain?” I didn’t know that. “Maybe that means, even after everything that happened, after all the pain, we can shine too.” There’s undeniable hope glinting in his eyes. I _want_ to believe it.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t want to know the truth. I want to remain as oblivious as ever; perhaps that way it won’t hurt. I don’t want his words to hurt anymore. At the same time, I want to believe every word he says, so that I have _something_ to hold on to.

Felix lopsidedly smiles, and it’s an anticipation of what’s coming. I want to vanish. “Maybe that means I still miss you, and maybe that’s something you don’t want to hear. Not from me, anyways. But maybe you should get used to the idea of someone, somewhere, always, just a little, missing you.”

He’s holding on to hope. 

I’m holding on to him.

I have to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if it made you feel tension and anguish then i know it isn't a complete failure ! that said, the next chapter is SO much better (i have already started writing it and honestly, it's worth a try)  
> this chapter is short i know, but it contains a lot of information about the past AND SO i would love to know your theories and what you guys think happened between them based on this new information! so please leave comments! i love reading them, they make me so happy! plus it's great feedback and, as i have no beta reader, it's more than helpful! thank you in advance :)


	7. Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ["Colors" by Day6](https://open.spotify.com/track/0vmsCEstRxinpCoULrUJrj?si=zcDnBlWwQaeCnHA5UJL-6w)  
> I’ve been quietly living  
> In a deep tunnel  
> that swallowed up the light  
> On the dark road ahead,  
> I can’t see a single step ahead  
> I can’t see anything  
> I can’t feel anything  
> Me in the black and white photo  
> My world that has spread black  
> I’m so tired, I’m so tired  
> Now I’m so sick of it  
> The colors of you that I see from time to time  
> It raises me up because  
> you’re the only one with your own color  
> I’m running out of breath  
> As I run to the deep ocean  
> that swallowed up the stars  
> I see the dry land  
> from far away  
> But your touch is like the sweet rain  
> It colors my heart  
> The colors of you that I see from time to time  
> It raises me up  
> (If you could, save me)  
> On top of my world that’s filled with scribbles  
> (Colors, Colors)  
> With your white hand  
> Cover me with your color  
> I try holding out my hand  
> to catch you  
> But you get farther away  
> Hold out your hand  
> Color me like that red sunset  
> So I won’t lose myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiii !! it's me again ! sorry i've been mia and took me so long to update, i was going through a writing hiatus !! i bet you were all wondering if i had given up on this au - the answer's no :) as i said once before, i'll tell the story from beginning to end, even if i'm not the most consistent updater. i am sorry i kept you waiting, that wasn't my intention at all, i just have been dealing with stuff and tbh i haven't been okay. sometimes i need time to myself (even if it means not updating for months). anyways, i wanna dedicate this special chapter to gee, my loyal reader and friend (i'm pretty sure you're gonna like what's gonna happen hihi) and i also wanna dedicate this chapter to melody (previously known as upsetti spaghetti) for oddly giving me strength to continue - i know you won't understand this but your words mean something special to me and i'll never be able to thank you enough for what you did. also i wanna thank y'all for sticking with me ! thank you for your time and your kudos, they mean the absolute world to me.

_We were inseparable. We were bright and beautiful and burning. Now our hearts have grown cold and distant._

_I always realize the value of things after I lose them; everything that’s precious, everything that means something to me, I always let it slip away, like it was never mine to keep. As if I never deserved it in the first place._

_I don’t deserve beautiful things. I never deserved my best friends._

_We were beautiful. Eternally unbreakable._

_But beautiful things are always meant to break. And disappear forever._

  


❦

Jisung fell in love with Felix that summer. He wasn’t sure exactly when the feeling of _loving_ someone grew on him, he wasn’t sure when it all started but the only thing he knew was that with Felix, he felt good and, more importantly, he felt a better person. He had the ability to take out the utmost best out of him.

 

At first he didn’t know what it was, this feeling of wanting to protect him from harm and evil and keep him close to his chest and sing him to sleep and admire the beauty in his eyes and the truth in his lips, but it didn’t sound like nothing. Mom had once told him love meant putting somebody else before him, and Jisung knew that if both him and Felix were slipping off the edge of the world into a sucking black hole, he’d let go so that he could live — it was his own way of interpreting what Mom had said and admitting to himself that he had, in fact, fallen in love.

Yet it didn’t feel good at first, unlike most people told him it usually did: it was scary to acknowledge that he had grown feelings for his best friend, and even scarier to acknowledge that those feelings were very strong. But then he thought it was beautiful: how a strong, inescapable feeling had grown for someone he was very fond of. Someone he’d give up everything for. The fright was replaced by appreciation.

He liked falling in love. But actually he hadn’t _fallen_ in love, he had fallen into the _realization_ that he had been in love with Felix all along. He had been smitten with him since the beginning of their story. He hadn’t known that what he had been feeling had been love all this time. And time only made it grow, and being apart for the whole year fed it.

He had been told wonderful things about first loves. He had been told that, if successful, it would last a lifetime. A first love also meant holding the bow and letting someone else pull back the arrow aimed at his chest, yet he knew Felix would never hurt him. It was also never thinking, never expecting, and he liked that feeling of love being out of his hands, out of his reach, something he couldn’t predict; he liked the unknown feeling surrounding it. Yet he was also told the bad things about first loves: if it failed, and he didn’t get true love coming from his crush, it would last forever but only in his mind and heart. It meant suffering on his own, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of knowing his crush didn’t reciprocate his feelings. It would also be the first time he would feel what happens when it is over, and love isn’t meant to be. It would crush him, of course. But he hoped for the best, because Felix was an _angel_.

Felix was the very essence of perfection. His eyes? Endless orbits of emotion, waves crashing when excitement fueled him, but small little rain clouds when he was sad; Jisung prayed it never rained. His hair? Light, gold, a slight mysteriousness in seemingly short but endless streaks; it just slightly covered his eyes, something Jisung always adored. His scent? Like peaches, sweet and soft; loving, but still with an outer shell. It was unique, it didn’t need an explanation; Jisung loved it. His smile? Jisung’s existence. He forever wanted to be the reason for his happiness.

He was beautiful, and it really wasn’t because of the way he looked. There weren’t words to describe someone like Felix, and Jisung never dared to find them; they’d never make him justice.

Jisung fell in love with Felix that summer, right before the world turned black and decided they weren’t made for each other and tore them apart. But it had been beautifully ephemeral, like star-crossed lovers. They weren’t made to be a forever. They were like shooting stars, once travelling through space and then… _gone_.

 

❦

The sky was burning red, streaks of orange and pink and yellow brushed across the sky until it looked like a painting. Thankfully, there was still sunlight and the stars were still asleep, so they had been allowed to stay outside until the sun disappeared from the sky and dinner was ready.

It had been Hyunjin’s idea to play hide and seek in the garden that afternoon right after they came back from spending the day at the beach. Chaewon, a well known champion among them had, for once, agreed to play with them and Felix had been dying to take his chance and beat his twin for the first time in his life.

They knew the house and both gardens like the palm of their hands. They knew every corner, every tree, every bush; they knew the gazebo was no place to hide, and neither were the orchid and the swings — for obvious reasons. Hiding inside the house was also off limits — Hyunjin had once broken a priceless, ancient vase and they didn’t want to repeat that incident.

Chaewon had been chosen to be the seeker, and Jisung knew right then where he would hide and win the game. As soon as Chaewon closed her eyes and started counting, Jisung sprinted to the back of the second garden, right behind the only big, round, full bloomed dark green bush lying just a few feet away from the fence. There was a pungent smell in the air, the scent of summer flowers, which he was grateful he wasn’t allergic to. He crouched down and waited. It wasn’t long before he heard something scuttling towards him at full speed.

He poked his head from behind the shrub. “Felix!” he hissed. His best friend had stolen his hiding spot and had crouched down next to him, knees close to his chest. Either way, the bush was wide and tall enough to hide both of their scrawny preadolescent — quite not yet spurt — bodies. He poked his head again to make sure nobody had seen them: they were safe.

“Sorry, I didn’t know where else to go,” he excused, lowering his head in answer to Jisung’s reprimand.

He glanced at the sky. Afternoon birds were chirping. He sighed. “You can stay if you keep yourself quiet.”

For the next couple of minutes, Jisung scanned the garden: Seungmin had hidden atop the shed, Chaewon was searching in the first garden and Hyunjin was nowhere in sight. Then, he heard voices: Seungmin had been found. They crept closer to the fence, lightly leaning against it. Jisung felt his body clench up, and something cold rippled up his spine. He held his breath: Felix was just a few inches apart.

It wasn’t after a bee startled him with its buzzing that he realized how silent they had become. A single, buzzing bee had disrupted the awfully quiet atmosphere. Jisung failed to react at first, but he discovered it was because he was the only one who had noticed the insect. It landed softly on his friend’s golden head.

“Felix! There’s a bee on your hair!” He guessed the bee had been attracted to his honey colored hair.

Felix reacted immediately, flinching. “Well, get it off! Get it off!” He squealed, hands shaking, voice laced with panic. The fear had invaded those tranquil eyes, which now stared in horror. Yet Jisung couldn’t help but giggle at his friend, afraid of a tiny, inoffensive bug.

“It’s on your cheek!”

“Wha—”

A hand flew in the air. “There!”

“Ouch! You didn’t have to slap me!”

“You wanted it off or not?”

“You killed it, oh my god,” Felix’s voice dropped. The bee was lifelessly lying on the grass, its once flashing wings still now. “Oh my god, you just killed a bee!”

“Shush! They’ll find us,” He whispered, clamping his hands over Felix’s mouth.

Felix’s face relaxed into a smile. Jisung’s hand still rested on his cheek, and it was soft and freckled and chubby.

Felix was warm, warmer than the sunny afternoon. They froze for a moment, eyes fixed on each other like they were seeing the universe for the first time. Felix’s stomach twisted itself in knots and Jisung’s breath hitched. They were both blushing, too blind and clueless to comprehend what was happening and what was about to happen next.

Beautiful, unknowing — yet so familiar — awkwardness thrived in a brief, private moment of almost unbearable silence between them. The flickering expressions of uncertainty were punctuated with evident excitement in their eyes between their fleeting, but longing gazes. It was a charming moment before the unexpected — yet very much expected — thing happened.

And then, as if their worlds had finally aligned, the right moment came, as if they had been waiting for this their whole lives. 

Jisung impulsively leaned in with the force of a thousand heartbeats per second and he kissed Felix where no one had before. It was immediate. It was spontaneous: Jisung didn’t know eternity could exist in just a few seconds. Felix kissed like the summer sun, unapologetic and reckless, warming his soul beneath the skin. He made Jisung’s heart swell and it quieted his anxious, racing mind. It was like there was nothing at all yet he had all these feelings inside bursting out of the seams of his heart. It was ephemeral yet eternal. And it was a big, monumental step too; it would change everything they had come to know about each other.

It felt as if he had wanted to do that all of his life, like all this time he had just been _waiting_ for this very moment. He found the answer in those heart shaped lips he had always stared at, but never touched. And now they were forever his, in a way: there’s only one first kiss in life, after all.

He never wanted things — _feelings_ — to get in the way, but he didn’t know how to hold himself back. It was out of his control. He sure didn’t want to ignore them because he liked how they made him feel: like he was worth something. Like there was a tad of goodness in him somehow, a tad only Felix saw.

That kiss could’ve been nothing, just what it was: an innocent, playful kiss. Not even a smooch, merely a peck. But the problem lay there — it had meant so much more.

In that stolen moment, the world was theirs.

  


But it was rather fleeting. Goosebumps marked themselves on Felix’s skin. Jisung realized he still hadn’t breathed out, so he exhaled slowly, quietly. He felt paralyzed, and didn’t quite know what had come over him — impulse maybe. Desire? Or yearning for something so badly. Uncertainty invaded his thoughts. But now the feeling was surely out of his chest.

He wasn’t afraid of what Felix was thinking: he couldn’t hide the prominent smile on his face. His cheeks were burning red, his eyes sparkling like he had whole constellations in them. Jisung’s heart felt a little lighter.

Still, something interrupted the growing silence between them; the bush shuddered and soon, there was another person among them, stealing the chaste moment away.

“Hyunjin!” He startled. “What are you doing here?” He reproached. Jisung feared Hyunjin had seen them.

By the clueless look on his face, he had come a bit too late to witness it, much to Jisung’s pleasance. He sighed, relieved.

His sight went back and forth between Felix’s glinting eyes and Jisung’s frowning eyebrows. “I heard Felix scream.”

“Oh, great! Now we’re screwed.” He threw his hands in the air, talking for the first time since the kiss. It was a way of releasing the unbearable, increasing tension.

Jisung remained quiet, too dazed to fully understand what had happened and what it had meant.

  


In the end, Hyunjin won against all four of them. Chaewon wasn’t disappointed though; at least her twin hadn’t beaten her. She remained the champion, in a way. But what she didn’t know was that Felix had won something far more important, more valuable than anything else: he had won someone’s heart. His feelings had been reciprocated, and it sure felt so much better than anything else.

  


 

That same night, the air was percolating with an expectant energy. That afternoon something had changed; their feelings had blossomed out of their chests into a mutual growth of love; they had taken a big step, one they couldn’t take back.

The atmosphere was quieter than usual — it was almost awkward even. Their tongues had been tied by the events of that fateful afternoon.

It wasn’t fear that invaded Jisung’s thoughts; it was saying the wrong thing. He didn’t know how to face the topic and, for that matter, he didn’t know how to face Felix. But he didn’t want to waste the night in silence, and certainly not waste the beautiful full moon shining above them, so he puffed up his chest and broke the silence.

“About today—”

“Do it again.” Felix replied immediately: it sounded like a dare. “Do it again,” he repeated, more like a plea.

Jisung got closer and closer until their lips met again, as if he had kissed those saint lips a thousand times before, as if he had known those lips on his his whole life. However, this time it was sweeter, longer, hands intertwined. It was a bit more desperate and needy but still gentle. Felix seemed less stiff and more relaxed: the intimacy had amplified.

“So what do we do now?” He asked, pulling apart. There was a hint of fear in his tone and a hint of wonder in those hazel eyes.

“What are you scared of?”

Felix gasped for air. The answer floated around his head for a few seconds. “I don’t know. I’m just scared of disapproval, you know?”

Jisung nodded, “Yeah, I don’t want the guys to find out either. I don’t want to break us apart.” What would they think? Jisung didn’t have all the answers, but he sure feared his friends’ disapproval. “We’ll keep it secret.”

He never planned for his feelings to get in the way and he didn’t want to break their friendship. He didn’t want to keep _them_ secret either, but he truly wanted things to remain as they were. So they made a pact, to never tell anyone about them, no matter the circumstances or hardships. It was the safest and most rational thing to do — or so it looked like that at the time.

They talked for a bit, the summer night wind catching fragments of their murmurs, whisking their dreams away. The pale moonlight illuminated Felix’s eyes, that had the entire night sky in them, and a gentle breeze played with his hair. Jisung was distracted by the curve of his lips as he spoke.

“Felix,” he interrupted, a heavy sigh accenting his word. He was about to overcome a fear, one that had recently surged. He felt like the universe was on his side tonight, and that he had nothing to fear any longer. He was sure his eyes had given it away already. “I like you.” _Like_ symbolically meant much less than _love_ , but in truth he couldn't bring himself to spit that heavy word.

An eternity seemed to pass by before Felix replied, beaming, “I like you too, Ji.”

  


 

Jisung found himself falling in love with everything Felix did. He loved the way his hair gleamed in the sunlight and the way his nose scrunched when he laughed — and how he would immediately cover his mouth with his small hands. He loved the way he shyly sneezed and the way he sounded and drooled when he slept. He would hear his voice and it would soothe the darkest of nightmares. Jisung saw Felix as a masterpiece, an angel that had been sculpted by gods and sent down to Earth to save him from self destruction. He was disgustingly in love; he would blush and get butterflies in his stomach when they looked at each other or stood merely close, and his heart would make all these pangs and skips and it would shrink until he was out of breath. Love was a hell of a weird feeling. **  
**

And yet, Felix looked like he belonged in Jisung’s arms, nowhere else. It was his comfort zone, the place he knew he was wanted and loved. So Jisung always kept Felix in his arms at night, because when he looked down at him and his freckled cheeks, starry eyes and heart shaped lips, he looked like he belonged.

Every time Felix looked at Jisung it was as if he was seeing the universe for the first time. Their hands would brush and the skin contact would make the stars in Felix’s eyes lit up. It was subtle yet meaningful, stolen moments that would look normal in the eyes of their friends. It made them believe they could beat the odds, and that was all they really needed.

 

 

One cold night, Felix cuddled up to him, draped over a blanket and stared at him, and for the first time, Jisung couldn’t read him.

“What’s wrong?”

In truth, Jisung was happy with Felix, under a warm blanket in the dark, feeling his breath upon his neck until morning came and took his dream away. It was one of those rare moments where Jisung felt really like himself. He wasn’t a younger brother, he wasn’t a leader: it felt as if when he was with Felix at night, those things didn’t matter — he felt unreachable, untouchable. Felix always made him feel that way and he loved feeling like he was truly and wholeheartedly himself; he had nothing to prove. Felix always gave him that ability to feel free.

But he was uneasy. “I don’t want tomorrow to come,” he confessed, head on Jisung’s shoulder. “Let’s just lie here for eternity instead. Can we just hold hands and watch the sky together, forever?” The innocence dripped from his lips.

“I’ll always follow you everywhere.” He smiled warmly. Felix smiled back. “There’s a red thread tied to our very own pinkies.” He took out his hand from beneath the blanket, and bent his little finger a few times. Felix giggled, linking their pinkies together in the way a promise was made. “We are destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch, tangle and unravel, but it will never break.”

“We will never break.” Felix said. He could already feel the thread tied around his finger, and even though he couldn't see it, he knew it was there, existing just for the two of them.

But the universe was cruel to them. And the magical cord bent, stretched, tangled, but it never returned to its original shape. **  
**

Yet it never broke either.

 

 

A month left before they returned to their normal lives, the parents went home. Chaewon and the little ones were gone, too. The house that had been filled with people and laughter was now silent and lonely. Only four guests remained: the lost boys. They had the house to themselves, and a full summer month to waste for themselves.

Being without the adults meant more fun, meant breaking more rules, meant “being responsible” to a blind eye, to someone that wasn’t there to check on them. It meant more adventures, more games, no control whatsoever.

A month left before they returned to their normal lives, Hyunjin tasted booze for the first time. He had discovered his parents’ secret stash one fateful night and opened one of the finest and most expensive bottles of wine. The alcohol made him feel giddy and tipsy and powerful. He called the unbottling a ‘ _celebration of youth_ ’, a breaking free from the responsibilities and expectations. Back then, Jisung didn’t think anything about it; it seemed innocent even.

Yet something was destroyed that day, something hidden in the depths of Hyunjin’s heart. It took Jisung years to understand what the _celebration_ had really meant.

That night, Hyunjin tasted booze for the first time, but it surely wouldn’t be the last.

❦

Miyoung decides to bring the four of us to the beach. For the first time, I do not refuse.

The weather this afternoon is splendid, the clouds make way and allow the sun to streak through in slants. Its light shines off of the top of the waves and makes everything on the beach gleam. The wind is gusting harder than usual today. Everything moves slower here — as if even the seconds are stretching themselves out in the sunshine to live more.

I sit in the shadow of a palm tree, my flimsy shirt fluttering around me. I gaze out at the hazy area on the horizon where ocean meets sky and follows the slow-moving silhouette of the water.

The trees bow and sway when the wind picks up. More and more clouds begin to break away, revealing more and more patches of striking sky and shining sun. The temperature noticeably spikes, as the sunset makes its appearance in the sky. It reminds me of a sunset I saw years ago; the sky burning red, like it had caught itself on fire.

Miyoung and Hyunjin enjoy themselves in the ocean, like proper grandma and grandson; they look so alike, same porcelain skin and secretive eyes. Seungmin, metres ahead and closer to the water, subtly smiles back at me, mometarily raising his sight from his book, and idly curves his lips, and I allow myself to return the smile; even though it's brief, I know what it means — we’re _healing_.

I just sit and stare out at the distance and the space between me, the ocean and the sky; the world is infinite, and infinitely expanding.

“At the end of every sunset, there is a new beginning,” Felix says, sitting next to me on the sand. His hair glistens. The sandcastle he made a few moments ago stands still, as if its strength comes from its very creator; he was always the best one of us at building them. “The truth is, the most beautiful sunsets we will ever witness are still yet to come.”

The sunset paints him beautifully and to perfection, as if a box has been kept somewhere, hidden from me, and is now open to the world, together with memories and all the beautiful things.

But beautiful things do not last.

Our new beginning will never come; we will never witness _the_ most beautiful sunset because it simply does not exist. “I’m tired of it all,” I say. “I’m tired of new beginnings and tired of all these before and afters. I’m tired,” I say, my heart pumping out of my chest. “I’m tired of dwelling with the past.” A part of my soul has evaporated from my body, it feels lighter.

Felix simply nods. “Aren’t we all?” He chuckles. I don’t know what he finds funny.

I remain silent. I’m quiet because I need to figure myself out. It’s not because I don’t want to talk to Felix. Sometimes, there are no words for my thoughts. Sometimes I’m here. Sometimes I’m not.

I wish the sky could set me on fire. I wish I were a phoenix, rising from its ashes; a new beginning. A restart.

I’ll never be able to have a new beginning with Felix because our past is attached to our very cores.

“I have a feeling in my chest that makes me believe anything is possible,” he starts. A flock of seagulls set flight above us. “It’s the feeling of the colors in the sky at sunset, the moment before a first kiss, the feeling of remembering cherished memories. You won’t believe me but I knew we’d meet again.”

It astounds me: I never thought I’d get to see him again after that turbulent summer — I never thought I’d get a chance to atone for my mistakes. I never thought he would want to see me again. “How could you be so sure?”

“Because,” he says, grinning. “That feeling never fails me.”

His heart is broken yet he stares at me like I can fix him — I can’t even fix myself. My soul has shattered and all there really is of me is the outer body of a corpse.

“I don’t feel anything at all,” I confess. “I’ve been numb, I haven’t been able to _feel_ for a long while.”

“I would rather feel pain, I would rather feel heartache than nothing at all.” Felix smiles briefly. “Vulnerability is a superpower.”

It’s his superpower. I wish I knew mine. He represents strength in softness, and I have never seen anything nor anyone quite like him.

I miss the simplicity of preadolescence, where we would be in love and that was all. I’ve spent this whole summer regretting the things, the mistakes I made that summer. I’m tired of feeling like I have to regret screwing up continuously, like I have to apologize for simply being myself.

The sky now paints itself of lilac and orange and pink and yellow, marking the end of the day as the sun continues to set. It’s beautiful, how something as changeable as the sky always maintains its beauty, unlike us.

But I have to break all hope. I have to break the hope that has been rising inside Felix, so that I can finally stop hurting him once and for all. It pains me to see the illusion in his eyes every single time; he doesn’t deserve this. 

“I never liked you,” I say. I know nobody else can hear us, not from so far away. It feels, somehow, like he’s the only one that can hear my voice. “I just liked the idea of you that I had constructed in my mind.”

He doesn’t take long to reply: maybe he dodged the bullet. “We both know that’s not true,” Felix says slowly, unbelievably, lips pressed in a thin line; he’s trying hard not to let my words affect him in any way; he’s trying hard not to let a tear slip away. He puts his head down on his knees.

I’m trying hard to keep my act up. “What the fuck would you know, Felix? You don’t know me. The me I am right now, the me I’ve been for the past five years.” Yet the undeniable truth slips from my mouth: I have changed. And he hasn’t been there to see it.

I can hear his heart break, like glass crashing onto the ground. It makes a loud thud, yet it’s subtle but concise. It’s delicate, like rose petals falling from the flower. It all happens in stop motion, like the world wants me to do something about it but there’s nothing I can do now: the words are already out in the world, spit by my malign mouth. My words contain a venom I dont think Felix will get a cure for. There’s no turning back.

We weren’t made to be together again, no matter how much Felix wants to.

Though I wish I could take it back. Too much hurt all at once. “Sorry.” It doesn’t even make up a fraction of how sorry I actually am. I need to learn how to let my guard down, because not everyone is an enemy ready to stab me in the back; I just don’t know the difference.

“I don’t need to know who you are to know that you haven’t changed,” he says, voice breaking.

It’s not like me to be mean. I don’t know what happened. “Sorry,” I repeat.

“It’s alright. I was expecting you to say that,” he says. He shrugs, his eyes turning into crystals. The tears are welling up but not a single one falls down.

This is a moment of relief, that lives both in him and in me. This moment feels so normal, like we’ve been here a thousand times before yet it’s new, like it’s the first time I’m seeing the world with him.

We’re calm, like all our feelings and thoughts have disappeared behind the shade of the afternoon sun. I wish this feeling of calmness could last forever.

Despite it all, I feel a tad of happiness. The sound of the waves, the sun beating down on me and Felix beside me, glad that he wants to be near me.

Maybe he’s just looking for me to tell him that us being together again isn’t as impossible as it looks. Maybe he’s waiting for me to tell him I was wrong when I left him five years ago.

But I can’t bring myself to do neither of those things; I can’t lie to him anymore. No matter what bullets I aim towards him, I want him to convince me not to pull the trigger anymore; I want him to listen to me the way I haven’t been heard in years. I like the company, despite lying to myself that I felt comfortable sitting alone in complete darkness.

I break the unending silence. Perhaps this way I’ll answer some of his doubts; I don’t want to be a closed book anymore. “Life's not about waiting for things to happen, it's about doing them,” I start. “I wanted to kiss you when I did all those years ago. I wanted to walk away when I did, too. It’s all about the choices we make, and sometimes they’re not the right ones. We fuck up. I messed up so bad and you did too, we all did. We didn't know how to grow up, we still don’t. So many things are expected from us and we don't know how to deal with that. We are unable to learn because we are unable to face the fact that this will all be gone, that what we know now, that life as it has been so far is going to be over once summer ends. That’s just the way things are.”

"But that is not the way things are supposed to go," he sighs. There's something glinting in his eyes besides light — I want to believe it's hope. I never want to see hopelessness in those crescents. “I haven't stopped thinking about you, you know,” he continues, but stops shortly before adding, “not even after all these years. I keep thinking about what we could have been.” _What they could've been if he hadn’t walked out — if that summer hadn't come crumbling down on top of them._

“Stop thinking then,” I say. “There's no us.”

“Not now but there used to.”

_There used to._ We could've bloomed into something beautiful and innocent and pure. But the world had other plans. Our futures weren’t made to be intertwined.

“Why is love so complicated?” I ask, quickly followed by, “Don't answer that.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“Stop giving me space, I don't need that.”

“Then what _do_ you need?” _What do you want from me?_

“Just you,” I say. Maybe a part of me wants things to go back to the way they were, just for a moment. I want to picture us the way we used to be, how innocent and cheerful we were. The world has turned cold since then. “Hold me.” _Like I used to do with you, back when you were scared and needed someone to rely on. Back when the world seemed cold and dark and you couldn't find the light to go on. Back then you needed someone to remind you of the warmth of the sun, that there was still love in people's hearts. Back when all we had was us and it was enough to make you smile, before it faded and the cold of the world brought you back to reality._

He wraps an arm around me and I rest my head on his shoulder. He's _warm._ He’s all and exactly what I need. “Thank you.”

Silence seeps in inevitably, but the howling wind of the late afternoon is filling up the distance.

I want to erase the five year gap. “You knew all the little things about me and I knew yours. Heck, they made me love you even more.”

“You still know them,” he says. “I haven’t changed much.”

I want to ask what he means, but I better leave that unsaid for now. **  
**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope y'all liked this chapter !! i hope you enjoyed it, i hope it was worth the wait. as y'all can see, i'm a sucker for symbolism and y'all can bet there will be more symbolisms later on.  
> fun fact the bush was inspired by my own bush at the back of my backyard (yes, by the fence) and i used to hide there when i was little and played hide and seek with my siblings/cousins/friends. nothing happened there for me tho lmao  
> fyi don’t kill bees, we need them. don’t be like jisung.  
> as always, comments are deeply appreciated - i wanna know your theories ! i wanna know your thoughts :)


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